She Made Him Wait
by Man of Sitruuna
Summary: One's mind is never set in stone. When it comes to her feelings around her blond team-mate, Sakura knows this; but what she failed to see was that like waves against rock, time can erode the motivation of even the most stubborn of people. He was hers, she was sure of it...but how can something be stolen when she never truly possessed it? Strictly NaruIno. Lemons from the offset.
1. When Captivation Became Freedom

**Disclaimer: S.O.P etc etc. "Don't own Naruto, or any legal rights involving the characters, trademarks, everything inside it. I have no jurisdiction over Kishi's manga trolling, so it's not my fault if it's all going tits up. The End."**

**So yeah, I was thinking of this story for a while. I just wanted to make a pairing fic that kind of rubbed itself in Sakura's face for being such a stupid and thick-foreheaded canon cow. Problem? Hope not, since you're reading this...**

**Anyway, this is just the prologue, it's in first person. Chapter 1 and just about everything onward will be in third person, but uses present tense. 'Post Training Relief' actually came about because I rewrote some aspects of chapter 1, that's why they're both in present tense. I actually like present tense, it allows me to be a lot more metaphorical in my descriptive writing. As well as a shitload more lemony :-3**

**This prologue looks more at the feeling of connection that Naruto has with his...lover. It's not meant to be a full, run-of-of-the-mill lemon because otherwise you'd fap and then run off. This is a _prologue_, so expect ambiguity and gaps that will have you coming back to find the answers that fill them. One-shots deal with simple lemons, but this isn't a one-shot, so it's got to have you coming back to find out more.**

**Enjoy, my fellow pervs!**

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><p><strong>She Made Him Wait<strong>

**A Naruto Fan Fiction**

**Prologue: When Captivation Became Freedom**

From the moment I could understand the native language of this continent, I found myself asking the same question over and over: Is fate my overlord?

My life has always been painful. Ever since I could walk, I was looked over as a nothing. Actually, I wasn't a nothing; I was a something, but that 'something' was seen by my own village to be worse than a nothing. For fifteen years, I lived in fear of the people of my home, how they scorned and segregated me, looked down upon me like the disease-ridden excrement that drips from a sewer pipe. For fifteen years, I desperately sought the purpose of my existence. Was I to remain a stain on the history of my home forever, as if it was the grand scheme of the God I often found myself praying to, or was I eventually destined to become something better?

However, it was not just my physical existence that I thought was bound by the supposed precognitive entity. I lived for nine years believing that my life was purpose built to perfectly fit with another, much like a jigsaw piece. I always wished, above just about every single belief that I held, that all of my childhood hardships would be rewarded with a gracious romantic charity.

My belief…was well founded, because I now find myself in the immediate transaction of that charity.

She…she's all can think about now. Why? Because she accepts me, faults, ramen addiction and everything else. She knows who I am, and she has had the will to move on from the past. The latter is a change I had been waiting so long for, and had been begging so hard to see.

The air is musky and humid, and the baking sun only makes it worse. The sweat that it bleeds from my skin mingles with the thick residual smell of pollen and herbs, almost like a horticulturalist's greenhouse in the middle of spring. The heat has not only a stellar source, for the way her body moves in perfect harmony with mine draws yet more moisture from my pores; it's a physical reaction that proves the extent to which I am sacrificing the on-going chase of my dreams, all just to provide to her what she never admits she wants. Deny as she may; I can see it in her eyes, just as well as she can see the same in mine: the raw, _physical_ want of a comforting embrace.

Her silken skin feels like nothing I've ever before grasped between my fingers. There is no 'hers' and 'my' sweat, it's _ours_, a by-product of the dance we find ourselves performing almost every single moment we meet. Her smooth, perfectly sculptured form somehow feels as if it was solely created to be caressed by my hands and my hands alone, every dip accommodates whatever I think rightfully fits, be it my hands…lips…tongue; every single curve built by her muscles is another flawless purchase that I can grasp and embrace. It's almost as if…fate _made_ her for me.

I'm looking down at her impeccable being, and I can't help but be at her mercy, even when she has no idea she's doing it. I always knew that I was susceptible to such things…but to this effect? I'm no longer so stupid as to give her what I can provide without some sort of return, but there seems to be something inside me that she can unconsciously manipulate. This…force…makes me want to be there for her, whenever and wherever she may need me. Even though I may be called crazy for saying it, I don't think I can have anybody else but her. I fell in love with her…but right now, those are three words I'm afraid to say, all because she's never given a clear indication as to what lies in her own heart other than her desire for my physical being.

She's surrounding me like warm velvet, and the way her back arches up from the floor and her knees support her end of our connection only invites me to indulge her with greater speed and harsher force. Even as her head is turned, making her cheek rub along the tiled floor in synchronicity with my movements, I can tell from her gaping, idle jaw and harsh breaths that she enjoys this even to the extent that I do.

She gasps my name. Not _his_, mine. That alone makes my blood run with flaming passion and an equally sized inferno of gratitude. It lets me know that her old puppy love no longer exists, and that she's not fantasizing that I'm somebody else. My hands move upwards from the smooth marble of her waist, sampling every goose-bump and miniature scratch that wrote the fable of our last encounter across the gorgeously pale skin of her back.

A gorgeous squeal escapes her lips as I lean forward, pressing my chest into her shoulder blades and replacing the cool floor rubbing against her stony nipples with the seemingly scorching skin of my palms. I want to take every inch of her and in every possible way, which is why I pull her up with me, standing our upper bodies as upright as the metal shelving units cocooning us for a few necessary minutes of privacy. I know she feels the pressure of my hands against the soft, spongy flesh of her chest, but the fact she gasps my name...twice…with renewed desperation tells me it's driving her insane with blissful rapture.

Her once idle hands reach up and cover my own, keeping me tight against her as if she needs my embrace to stay alive; but she doesn't need to worry about that, knowing I can give her this pleasure exclusively only makes me want to come back for more. The faint, almost fruity smell of her hair directly clashes with the heated evaporation of her…no, _our_ sweat; meanwhile, the fragrant taste of her neck as I run my lips along her veins, feeling the small tickle of her galloping pulse and how it tells me her exact level of excitement, pales in comparison to the hot, carnal juices we share when we kiss. I know she wants to do that this very second, based on how she tries to turn her head back to look at me, even though its far beyond what her body will physically allow. Not even I can lean my head forward enough to see to her wish, but I can offer the consolation of the feel of my tongue, letting it sprout from my lips to meet her own halfway.

The searing heat of her breath paints my face, and the temperature goes nowhere but up as I reach the one spot inside her that only our current pose will make susceptible to contact. Her deep moan is nothing but another dozen pieces of coal that keeps my passion alight and twice as large; and I can no longer stand to continue without directly facing the beauty whose whim I can do nothing but surrender to.

The brief reluctance I bottle up at having to release myself from her taut heat is washed away by the look of pure nirvana I witness across her face as I force her to rotate at the hips, her knees quickly following suit. I can't help myself, and my ensuing lunge slams her back down into the porcelain of the floor, but she only moans louder as I graze my teeth against her earlobe in brief substitution of the filling sensation she had begged me for ten minutes earlier. Although she doesn't make as loud a sound as I once again claim position inside the one thing she has never allowed any other man to feel, I'm stung with minor pain as she pulls at my hair and forces my eyes only centimetres away from hers. She gives me only one order, and I would be the world's biggest fool to disobey.

"Fuck me, Naruto." Her voice, ragged and shaky from my previous overabundance of force, sounds like a whisper, but I smile in the knowledge that she is almost out of breath…and that I was the one who had stolen it from her lungs. In return, she immediately steals my own oxygen in a burning unison of our lips. Kami, she's so fervent when we talk through our skin, she can tell me better than any book as to how she wants it and where she needs it. We have a very interesting connection that's almost symbiotic; she can have me at the tips of her fingers without hearing a word of protest, but when we're like this…I'm the one who seems to call the shots…and I can tell from the faces she pulls and the sounds she creates that she absolutely _loves_ it.

I inhale the breath of her most recent moan due to our oral connection, and I revel in how her heels slip against the backs of my thighs as I carry out her near-desperate order. The fluids that she secretes make it so easy for me to stir her sacred channel...it feels as if her body naturally accepts me, further supporting my belief that she was solely made for me, and I for her. I refuse to simply hover above her and move so uniformly, I need to do more…I want her to feel.

Although it's awkward, I strain my left arm to hold the majority of my upper weight as my right hand retreats to her shoulder. But I don't stop there; I keep moving it inward and down, sampling the sudden jumps of her being as it reacts to the way my hips slap against the apex of her legs. I can't help but groan aloud into her ear due to the feeling of being sheathed inside her, and my payments for doing so are numerous lines of red hot pain tracing the curve of my right shoulder blade along with a lithe, slippery hand clasping at my left buttock. I can feel the way her hand pulls against me for every sweeping intrusion I perform…she wants it harder, and I'm not stupid enough to not comply.

Even as her pale breasts dance over her chest from the way I drive against her, I can't help but wrap my free hand around a soft mound and admire how it snugly moulds all the way from the heel of my palm to the tips of my fingers. My forefinger and thumb slide together, sampling the change of texture in her skin as I move from pale skin to a pink areola, and from there to the hard bud of her nipple. A light flick from my thumb earns me a squeal and a harsh pinch forces another loud moan to bounce off the walls of plaster and glass.

"Yes…I love it…" She gasps sharply next to my ear. She says she loves _it_…but does she love _me_? She really has no idea what she's doing to me, does she?

Her rate of breathing increases, and even though her natural lubrication has made it harder for me to feel the subtle pressure changes of her opening, my experiences with her thus far have enlightened me as to what her body will do. She's about to find her release…courtesy of me.

"Do you want me, baby?" I can't help it; I know she's losing more of her sanity for the sake of gaining more pleasure in return, so I eagerly growl into her ear a question that I already know the answer to.

"Oh, Kami…yes…" To fully cement her answer in my head, I feel the tell-tale crossing of her legs around the small of my back and palms of her hands firmly pressing into my spine. "Fill me…I want it…" She says inside a heavy exhalation against my ear, reaffirming her wish by violently snapping her head up and capturing my lips again. The simple fact she has requested that of me stirs my insides, it's as if my very bodily functions are at her command…not that I mind when we're in scenarios like this.

My thrusts are making her volume increase for every breath she ejects, and take it me from me…she's breathing _really_ fast right now. It's a sweet melody that chips away at my resistance, and I know from our moments past that I can never last more than a minute once I know she's approaching that orgasmic precipice. I myself head to the exact same precipice every time we do this…hell, I feel myself holding the hand of her ethereal avatar when we make that jump, all because I feel such a powerful connection between us. The advantage of having such an attitude in your imagination is that your partner's actual feelings don't apply. Sadly, I don't know whether this is more than just sex to her, but aren't I allowed to have a small moment in which I can act as if this means as much to her as it does to me?

"Yes! Yes! Naruto!" I don't know if she does it on purpose or whether it's subconscious, but I have yet to witness the moment where my name isn't the very last word she screams at the moment I push her down that cliff of euphoria. I suppose I should savour that little moment of trivia…but I'm worried that it gives me hope when there may be no reason for it. However, now's not the time for thinking about those fleeting thoughts, because I feel the sudden but tell-tale surge below my stomach that tells me I've passed my point of safe return.

The warm, almost syrupy slickness that covers my embedded extremity tells me her barrier of - what was already futile - resistance has evaporated and been lost within the air her half-muffled scream has pulled from her voice box. It's all too much for me now, and my nerves, shredded from feeling every minor fluctuation in her soft but ridged canal, shoot a prickling sensation more powerful than a thousand needles all the way up to my chest like a tide breaking against coastal sand. She's allowed me to know when her lust has overcome her, so I have no problem in repaying the favour.

I've been working my hips so hard for our entire encounter that I have trouble holding my breath, but I try to do so regardless, because I don't moan in short and sharp bursts like she does; no, I give one long and gruff growl, much like when a masseuse presses like a vice onto a long-inconvenient muscle knot. Even though I shut my eyes, the white flash of nirvana blinds me as I force my lower body into her one last time. The sheer amount of leverage I use across my grounded knees and concaved back actually pushes her buttocks off the floor, giving the looped pulses of my liquid desire a direct path to her very core. Every time I feel the tightening of the muscle directly between my legs I eagerly, almost desperately push my pelvis towards her once more…even though everything I can give is already being accommodated. I suppose part of me does it to wordlessly inform her that I'm trying my best to push my gift of fluid to the place she always begs me to deliver it.

With the debauchery's end comes our very brief moment of relaxation, where we caress what we can of each other before we reluctantly, but necessarily have to depart one another's embrace. I know she still has another seven minutes before she has to go back to her work…back to roleplaying blatant inconspicuousness along with myself. We're not ready to let anybody know just yet, and it was all because of fate. Why? Because it changed my lover's hair colour from what I originally desired, and yet I feel that that in itself was intended in the grand scheme of things. For the beauty underneath me, whose lips try to weakly swallow mine in a failed attempt to counteract her body's exhaustion and frigidity, and whose arms tightly circle around my midriff as if I'm the only thing she ever needs in this world…does not have pink hair.

It's actually a glossy, pale blonde.

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><p><strong>AN: What do you think? Good smut or 'meh' smut? I quite like it, to be honest.**

**How many of you thought that the woman in this was Sakura? Hehe, if you're wondering why I did that, it's because it was my intention to make you think so.**

**Okay, I'm taking a page out of my 'Face The Music' feedback, and so the chapters for this story will be shorter. I'll probably be aiming my average chapter word count for over 5,000 but under 9,000 (UP YOURS VEGETA!)**

**Next chapter will be more Sakura-centric, but it'll still have lemony shit going up in this bitch, mkay?**

**What do you want me to release next? Don't be afraid to vote on the poll on my profile!**

**Reviews would be greatly appreciated, as long as they're not anonymous (since I've negated them and all that shizz). Say whatever you will, feedback makes me better. If you like it, put it on your alerts list, if you love it, put it on your favourites list.**


	2. To Have Lust And To Have Lost

**Disclaimer: Don't own any characters, locations, ideas, cricket bats, chocolate biscuits or cups of tea related to the Naruto universe etc. etc. *drinks tea*...shit, I've been had...*runs away***

**At. Bloody. Last! I guess I should take this opportunity to severely apologise to all of you who have been waiting for this in spite of my repetitive release date changes. I'll explain everything in the author's note at the end of the chapter, because I think you all want to just get to reading this, instead.**

**For KoalaKiller: You're absolutely right, release dates are balls. Please accept my apologies for inadvertently messing you about. Happy (extremely belated) birthday for the 5th.**

**A quick word of notice: I realised that I haven't really described Sakura's or Ino's outfits in this chapter. The main reason for this is that I honestly couldn't be arsed to mention them. Just to make things simple, it was my intention for their clothing to remain the same as it currently does in manga and anime canon.**

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><p><span>She Made Him Wait<span>

A Naruto Fan Fiction

Chapter 1: To Have Lust And To Have Lost

'_Today __will be the day'_, she nervously thinks to herself.

Countless times she has trundled with unintelligible pacing across the hollow floorboards of her new apartment bedroom, ignoring the muffled chatter of the crowds on the gravelly street below. Countless hours has she spent to the sole activity of gnawing the soft and pink skin of her lower lip, racking her thoughts over a hampering topic that she has contemplated for supposed aeons, but for which she has not yet found yet an answer. Whether it is due to her reluctance or barely-founded fear is something only she knows.

She has done it almost every day for the past three weeks. If at any time her green jewels visually caress the muscled and cloth-decorated form of one of her closest friends, she later returns to her second-floor sanctum to wordlessly interrogate herself once more. Why does she keep doing it? Will she do anything about it? _When_ will she do anything about it?

She tells herself that it has been too long. The worry in her heart says the window has closed, but the logic of her educated mind tells her that she is underestimating her target once again. _He_ was the one who had opened the window in the first place, and he has yet to declare that the opening has been permanently locked shut.

Someone once created the phrase, _'Better late than never'_. Obviously, that person was trying to cover up their own procrastinations, merely extending the opportunity to be harshly judged for their laxity and laziness. Is she in the same boat? Are the rewards of what she is intending to do enough to outweigh the sheer chasm of time that she has let swell between her and her target?

Although she knows that it has to be done eventually, her instinctual worry returns with a conundrum. He hasn't asked her out in three months…why?

Is he baiting her? Is he waiting to see if her ambition and drive have changed; that she is no longer chasing a dream that covered her eyes much like a genjutsu? The hollow thuds of her black, open-toed boots against the floor cease as she comes to the realisation of the 'eye-for-an-eye' scenario.

She had made him wait for so long, and now he is showing her how it feels.

How could it be anything else? But if that's the case, then does he know what scenarios his image conjures in her mind? Is he purposefully putting on a display, smugly displaying his belief that she would eventually look to him as something more? It was truly a mind-bending situation; but the young nineteen-year-old woman's skilled and analytic brains kicks in.

The wait she imposed upon him was forceful. She would always decline an advance or disavow any romantic possibility with the man in question. However, he is doing no such thing at this very moment. He is putting her at arm's length - deliberately or not, she doesn't know – but he is not enforcing the distance with verbal or physical restraints. That must have been the key to it all, and the young woman finally realises that the decision to act is totally up to her.

For three months…she's been making him wait again. It is he who is waiting for _her_ to make the move.

How evil could he be to pull that kind of guilt trip on her?

That thought alone ignites and churns the embers of her recognisable frustration. However, she knows that she can't simply walk up to him, physically assault him and claim that everything is the moron's fault without a good reason. In fact, blaming him for _not_ asking her out on a date would make her out as a deranged attention seeker…that would certainly not go down well in anybody's books; her reputation would surely be stained, and her image in his eyes would be tarnished for the long foreseeable future.

Although now aware that the decision is totally up to her, she knows herself well enough to see that while she feels as if it is an obligation, her own attitudes surrounding the subject of these internal qualms are changing like the leaves in autumn.

Her left hand rises from its purchase on her hip and deftly swipes a loose strand of her luminous, almost inhumanely coloured hair back behind her ear. As she looks up and takes in the ochre colouring of the buildings - their brickwork melding with the vibrant yellow of the sky-suspended sun - through the window before her, she sees a ghostly and opaque interpretation of herself staring back. She never meant to pull such a face, but her lowered brow and tight lip-line show that her subconscious itself is ready for business. Her body is steeling itself to undergo the first attempt of something she had never once considered performing until recently.

"No turning back now", she tells her hollow reflection before darting for the door sitting in the corner to her back and left. Halfway down the hall, she hears the latch connect to the frame behind her, and she knows now that her sanctum for searching her thoughts is closed until she next returns. She doesn't mind anymore, because each step she takes to the front of her apartment actually steels her ambition.

For today...Haruno Sakura is going to ask her long-time friend, her primary pillar of support, her saviour in dire times, her teammate…Uzumaki Naruto…for a date.

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><p>Despite her initial jitteriness at the expectation of what she is about to do, Sakura finds herself in the middle of a very annoying, but still quite significant fact.<p>

She can't find Naruto.

Ichiraku Ramen, Training Ground Three, the Hospital, the Hokage's office and the Hokage Monument…Naruto was nowhere near any of them, and that pushes the rosette's mind into her very-easily-accessible temper zone.

Being an addict to the stuff, his favourite ramen vendor was the first obvious choice. But all she found at the familiar establishment was an old pruning man sat before the working father-daughter pair. When asked, the both of them were solemnly negative when it came to their knowledge of their favourite customer's location.

Next was her team's original training ground; all she found were divots in the grassy plain and a strong southerly wind. Thinking with a sudden onset of enthusiasm that Naruto could have been searching for her at the same time, she had made her way to the Hospital; a thorough search of all three floors and the subtle interrogating of two nurses yielded no results.

Running out of options, she believed that he may have been harassing the Hokage for a mission…or just harassing for the sake of killing time. Much like the owners of the ramen stand, the Hokage hadn't smelled a whiff of Naruto thus far. Through desperation, she hurried up the pedestrian staircase to the top of the monument that displayed the faces of the villager's prestigious leaders, current and past, to their eyes. Unfortunately, both the natural and carved stone of the highest point in the village remain desolate, and the findings made Sakura's face burn with indignation in combination with the high-sitting sun.

Sakura's plans all suddenly appear scarpered, and so she finds herself looking for a place to vent…verbally. Focussed solely on reaching her new target destination, she doesn't care for a rather scrawny, middle-aged civilian who stares at her figure with a little too much interest, mostly because she knows that he won't have the power to do anything other than imagine. Her hips bob with her firm and rushed steps, her footfalls threatening to knock up miniature clouds of dust as her boots disturb the loose gravel of the sun-baked avenue.

The bland road, decorated in single-toned storefronts and teeming with placid shoppers makes Sakura rethink her route, but a sudden break in the dull colour scheme of the scenery twenty metres ahead brings somewhat of a wave of relief over her body. The green of her eyes swirls through the different colours of the rainbow as the reflection of a plethora of flora dance across her sclera.

In a more simple interpretation, the aforementioned blandness of the street is blemished by a vivid collection of bucket and trough-anchored flower bouquets. Sakura doesn't even have to scrutinise the entire front of the pale-yellow building to understand that it belongs to Konohagakure's most renowned clan of mind manipulators, the Yamanaka Clan. Sakura may feel a slightly pleasant sensation at seeing such a familiar landmark, but her general frustrations over the lack of finding a _certain knucklehead_ stop her from making any sort of face to express the pleasantry.

Almost forgetting to avoid a small raised step into the building, Sakura takes in the colourful interior of the flower shop with only mild interest. What her primary focus is set upon is the counter located near the back of the store, but directly in line with the shop entrance. For once, fate decides to favour Sakura by rewarding her with the sight of a blonde, purple-clad kunoichi…even though said kunoichi's back is squarely facing her.

"Ino", Sakura says in a tone that although calm, doesn't make her sound all that pleased. What happens next, however, takes Sakura by as much as surprise as her sudden appearance does with her quarry.

The kunoichi behind the counter turns with a very obvious start, accompanied by a light gasp and an open hand coming to a stop in the centre of her chest. If there was one thing Sakura knows about Yamanaka Ino, it's that her skin has a distinctly pale complexion; but the Ino she's looking at now…is considerably red in the face. Her cheeks, nose and lips appear to accommodate a large full-face blush; that, combined with how the young woman's raised hand quickly moves to fan her face, looks to be the result of overheating.

"Oh, Sakura!" Ino's response is even more off-kilter. Her voice is loud, bordering on a shout, while she subtly – but not unnoticeably – turns her head to the side with a smile whilst maintaining a peculiar sideways eye contact. Even though she's not directly looking at it, Sakura's keen eyesight notes how her friend's free hand lightly pulls at the hem of her large, superficial skirt as if to correct it; the short black skirt underneath it provides protection of her dignity. "What are you doing here?" Even as she begins to engage in conversation, Ino's volume barely drops a decibel. Sakura, suddenly off put by her old friend's uncharacteristic attitude, narrows her eyes and tilts her head back a few degrees.

"What's wrong with you? You're acting…weird." Sakura can't put it any other way. Ino's lips spew forth a hollow laugh before she idly fans her face once again.

"Oh, this heat's been playing with my head. I'm finding it hard to concentrate." Ino does have a point, the day is still in the hours of the high sun, and there's little cloud cover decorating the vivid azure sky; indeed, Fire Country could be a hot place to live in during the warm seasons, even for natives. Although the answer could well have been the truth, Sakura can't help but feel that…something is off.

"Okay…" Sakura lets a brief pause settle before properly answering Ino's earlier question, "I've been looking for Naruto, but the idiot seems to have vanished and I can't find him anywhere…not even Ichiraku!" Sakura duly emphasises the last section of her sentence, thus indicating the sincerity of Naruto's untimely disappearance. Sakura takes Ino's whole-body freeze as an understanding of the situation's severity.

"Oh, you're looking for Naruto?" Having not been massively surprised for a second time, Ino's sudden repeated increase in volume – again, combined with her slightly turned head – tweak once again at Sakura's suspicion. Feeling her frustration rise up her body once more, Sakura's answer is straightforward.

"Yes, yes I am…" Sakura's voice trails off, and her eyes suddenly snap to a point behind the friend before her. A distant grunting noise cannily echoes out from a curved-arch doorway directly behind Ino, accompanied by the ear-churning noise of metal scraping on ceramic. From behind the right side of the doorway, the target that has eluded Sakura for almost three-quarters-of-an-hour slowly edges his way into the rosette's sight.

While Ino turns around to overlook the commotion, Sakura finds herself captivated, yet again, by the physically active body of her teammate, Uzumaki Naruto. His muscle-bound, but nevertheless athletic arms are bare, emerging from a sleeveless vest-like mock-up of the jumpsuit he so adamantly wore during his mid-teens. The top hugs the swell of his chest and dips inward to cling across his abdomen and tight back before vanishing behind the waistband of some identical black pants, decorated with dark orange flames that licked up the side seams. His skin, a deeper shade than either Sakura's or Ino's, helps greatly emphasise the reflective glints of visible sweat that paint his forehead and arms.

His face is scrunched with concentration, the source for which soon enters Sakura's eyesight with him. His hands are tightly clasped around a pair of thin, vertically set metal girders, attached to which at specific intervals are horizontal plates of thin metal that stretch across to another pair of vertical supports. Every horizontal plate appears laden with variably-sized flower pots, all housing different species of flower and in different amounts. From the masculine grunting emerging from Naruto's throat, Sakura can only imagine that the shelving unit is heavy.

"Hi, Sakura-chan…" Naruto can only look across for a few fractions of a second and harshly shoot out the greeting, mostly because he seems to be straining with the shelving rack, "…I'll…be there in a sec." Sakura doesn't see it, but Ino allows a gentle smile to grace her lips as if to demonstrate her gratefulness.

"That's fine there, Naruto. Thanks." The moment Ino gives the go ahead is the moment that Naruto lets go of the breath he had been holding for the task Ino appeared to have pitted on him. Quickly dusting his hands off, Naruto smiles to himself before turning and exposing his full figure to the two young women stood nearby. One of them nods in thanks for his actions, and the other can't resist letting her eyes drop down his body as it tapers into his waist and divides out to mould his legs. And then she takes in his face.

His eyes dazzle against his heat-reddened face; his irises, a pair of ocean-blue circles that could easily suck one in without a single ushered word. His bright and unique hair has grown out into a distinct ball of what could only be called, 'mess'. Although it has been fashioned slightly similar to the late Fourth Hokage, he has forgone the two thick bangs that curtain his sharp jaw and minutely square chin. His smile, so white and bright, is more than enough of a capable image that can raise the spirits of any person who may be on a downer.

"Ino asked me yesterday if I could…help move some big stuff in the back of the store." Naruto's thumb points back over his shoulder at the previously manned room before inquiring as to the request of his company. "I'm pretty much done now, so…what do you need me for?"

Sakura's chest tingles with anticipation upon remembering her original goal. Naruto's look seems completely reserved for her; and now, she feels that it's time to finally reward him for such attention.

"Hi…Naruto", she tries to speak with a general amount of normality, but Naruto's gaze is chipping at her sincerity. "Erm…I…just wanted to talk to you." Naruto's raising of a single eyebrow doesn't help Sakura discern whether he wants her to continue or whether he's formulating an answer. Five seconds of silence pass, and Sakura remembers that Naruto is the kind of person who takes spoken words literally. He is expecting her to start talking to him _now._ She can't, Ino's in the room with them, and she can begin to imagine the verbal poking she would receive from her friend and ex-rival in love.

"Err…yeah", Sakura says aloud, but to nobody in particular. In a move that openly confuses both blondes, the rosette spins on her heel and makes for the exit located behind her. Pulling a face, Naruto stands still in blatant confusion. Sakura, meanwhile, begins berating herself at her complete hollow-mindedness; she _knows_ Naruto isn't following her, because she never told him to, and that's why her frustration starts simmering. She turns around, and sees the two of her fellow academy graduates silently staring at her with expressions of clear misunderstanding. Suddenly, she sternly points at the floor next to her, and raises her voice in a manner not unfamiliar to either of the other teens.

"Well, come on!" Like someone who has been lost to a daydream, Naruto suddenly shakes free of his reverie and briefly stumbles to follow, an action similar to his younger and more childish years. Sakura prematurely leaves the building, leaving it up to Naruto to follow her.

Exiting the shop, Sakura breaks left and walks for a few metres before turning back around to find Naruto only just making his way into the daylight. He slowly transitions into trotting at a leisurely pace towards her, but he can see the way in which the ball of Sakura's foot thoroughly taps against the ground. She doesn't mean to suddenly act so callous, but her inability to retain her desire to ask her planned question makes it harder for her to wait for the moment. In fact while her mind is telling herself to calm down, her eyes subsequently shut down and fail to process the large and calloused hand that flies from left to right and back again across her face.

"Sakura-chaaan…" Just hearing his voice say her name in a deep and curious tone knocks away her mind's control of her concentration. Although she doesn't physically shake her head, she looks back at Naruto, who has since increased his height lead over the medic to six inches, with wide and semi-dazed eyes. She locks on to his sapphire irises and can somehow feel that supernatural pull, but she knows that the real meat of her dilemma has yet to be exposed.

"Sorry, I was just thinking." She's actually thinking more about the significance of Naruto being in the Yamanaka's flower shop. He very rarely went in there, and flowers weren't his true forte. Then again, he said that Ino had asked him to help, and she knows that a friend in need would have no trouble getting assistance from the selfless Uzumaki Naruto. Speaking of selflessness, Naruto – still stood in front of Sakura - continues to keep his mouth shut as he waits for Sakura to start talking. She was the one who had wished to begin the conversation, and as such he had no problem with holding back his own chat material until Sakura had gotten hers out of the way. Oh, how thoughtful of him; he's only gone and maintained a large span of awkward silence without even knowing it. Idiot…

Now is the time that Sakura's original feelings of anxiousness turn into dread and pessimism. She told herself that today is going to be the day, and she has created the perfect window with which to make her decision to act a reality. Just as she has the perfect opportunity, her mind tells her that things can't all be the way they seem, and that something will inevitably go wrong. Why can't she be cut some slack?

"Say, Naruto…" The sentence begins, but Sakura trails off after saying her teammate's name due to the sudden flock of butterflies fluttering inside her stomach. She was always so used to asking out her _other_ teammate when they were younger, but that was when she had no true grasp of the significance of love and romance, how it was a bond to be cherished and not a competition to nab a trophy boyfriend. Sakura definitely understands the significance at this moment, and the fact that she's now taking the seriousness of her decision into account makes her want to take her time.

"I've…got the day off today, so…" Her eyes sink to the left of Naruto's feet, and her age-old nervous habit of stroking her forearm returns. Naruto, meanwhile, simply tilts his head to the side in mixed display of patience and partial expectation. Yet again, he doesn't know how uncomfortable he's making this for Sakura; the way he's looking at her with every ounce of his attention doesn't allow her any time to compose herself.

"I was…wondering…wondering if you…" Her eyes snap up and then away again, if only just to see if his own give away what's running through his mind. Lo and behold, he's standing there with the look of a puppy, completely oblivious to what's going on and waiting for the matter to be spelled out.

"Would you like to…go and get some ramen? I mean…the guys at Ichiraku said they haven't seen you so far today and…" Sakura begins to hopelessly drabble on and on to cover up the fact that she has just _asked Uzumaki Naruto to eat with her._ Before her hollow reasoning can carry on, Sakura finds herself cut off by a small chuckle. She looks up, and is surprised to find Naruto stepping up to her, his chest barely a foot away from the swell of her breasts.

"Haruno Sakura, are you asking me out?" His smile widens cheekily. Now Sakura feels the pressure, how does Naruto have her pegged so quickly? That's not fair, the discovery of her invitation shouldn't be so easy, and so Sakura tries to downplay the matter.

"N-No! Well…not really…" She knows she's lying, but she doesn't want Naruto to think that the situation is as simple as she's trying to make it, "It's just that…we haven't talked properly for a while, and I don't want us to drift apart." Finally looking back up, prepared to face the music, Sakura watches Naruto nod in understanding. All of a sudden, she realises that her past pessimism was probably unneccessary; why would Naruto, of all people, turn down an invitation to a bowl…or six…of ramen? If somebody were to cut him, he would probably bleed a brown broth instead of blood. Naruto looks off to his side, his smile suddenly flipping, which in turn puts Sakura on edge.

"If it were any other day, Sakura-chan, I would have said 'yes'." Sakura's face instantly drops. No way…what does he mean by 'any other day'?

"Thursday's my big solo training day; I'll be at the training ground practicing my more…widespread damage techniques. I don't want anybody else to be there in case I mess something up." Sakura wants to kick herself, how could she have picked the exact same day that would have meant rejection? Then again, her time apart from Naruto has made her lose touch with his timetable and thus she has nobody to blame but herself for her bad timing. Not one to give up so easily, Sakura pushes once more.

"Well, how about after that? I'm okay with waiting." Her hands join together behind her back, making her body open and, somehow, look more innocent.

"Sorry, Sakura-chan; I'll be there until night-time, and I usually end up tiring myself out. I'll probably head straight back to my apartment and hit the sack." Woe washes over Sakura like an upturned bucket of water, while she could understand Naruto's wish to rest after a hard training session, did he have to totally blow her off? Couldn't he have made a small gap in his timetable to accommodate time with his teammate, not to mention the girl he had chased for seven years? She was about to ask exactly that, bar the 'chasing the girl' stanza, but Naruto was already walking past her.

"Don't fret, I'll look for you tomorrow, we can make something happen." Although Naruto sounds cheerful, Sakura can't help but identify a lack of panache and…proper feeling in his tone; but as she tries to respond, she hears the crunching gravel under his feet die away as he walks off.

Left to stand on her own in the middle of the sparse crowd, Sakura tries to figure out exactly what just happened. In essence, Naruto declined her request of - what she weakly denied wasn't - a date, and said he'd seek her out to rearrange. Even so, Sakura doesn't understand why his timetable seems so full up for the next approximate nine hours. Surely, in all of that time, there could be a small window in which she could be the centre of Naruto's attention; but no, his entire schedule for the day consists of training and sleeping. That may have been the semi-typical Naruto of three years ago, but the medic is sure that he'd have to eat at least once or twice. Because of her scepticism, Sakura wants to at least insist once again later in the day, but part of her doesn't want to interrupt Naruto at the risk if him getting annoyed at her.

And so she decides there and then that if she can't get a full and _normal_ catch-up session with him for the day, then she would try something a little more extreme when he was tired out at the end of his training. It would certainly grab his full attention, but it probably won't make him regret turning her down now. With a small nibble at her lower lip, she heads at a gentle pace in the general direction of her apartment with a plan in mind; a plan involving the forecasted full moon, a quiet and crater-laden training ground, a tired, sweaty shinobi…and some very interesting medical skills.

* * *

><p>This time, Sakura knows exactly what she's doing.<p>

She's heading for her team's training ground for the second time today, this time under the darkness of the clouds that are banishing the moon's charming, soothing veneer of transparent white silk from touching the grass beneath her shoes. She knows fully well that Naruto will be there…covered in sweat…tired…likely to be missing his jacket and underlying fishnet…his body looking so ragged and physically magnetising that she would have no choice but to force submission from both him and it with _certain_ _techniques_.

Finally, she's grown up and opened her eyes. At last, she has seen just what has become of that which she had chased so adamantly for year after year. To love a killer and traitor birthed so many horrible 'what if' consequences pertaining to what would have happened if he had accepted her. Surely the village would throw her into disrepute; the Hokage may have relieved her of her apprenticeship, and possibly swapped her for someone with 'greater inclination to support the village and not one fallen man'. What of any children? Would they be mocked and scolded as the children of a violent traitor? Would they feel what Naruto had suffered through his independent upbringing?

Now, she pays no more attention to those fleeting thoughts. She is a woman that knows what she wants. Only one person had truly supported her at every turn, never raising a hand or displaying his back in defiance nor revolt; not once would he move to strike her like she had to him for so long. Finally, six years down the line, she has no doubt as to what her life needs in order to become complete and woe-free.

Naruto had already been hers for a long time, no doubt about it. And at last, she would willingly be his.

The flaring of her hormones, the swell of her chest and the tingle below her stomach as her eyes cascaded over her teammate's form earlier in the day only sought to drive her impatience. She could wait no longer. She was finally ready to commit herself to him, knowing all too well that he was already doing so with himself untoward her. Every step against the ground drove her closer to what she truly felt would become her future in peace and, most importantly, love.

Two hundred metres from the treeline, she only hears her footsteps. The smacking of her boot soles against naturally smooth tree limbs becomes the only hint of her presence. Her speed, slightly rushed in comparison to any other calmly moving, tree hopping shinobi, forces a rush of mild summer air into her ears. To the pink-haired beau, it's like she is sat on a beach: a cool breeze knocking the unruly bangs out of her face, and the sound of the ocean waving over her eardrums. It's such a calming feeling, and it seems to be such an appropriate scene-setter considering how she's planning to talk to _her_ blonde knucklehead.

One hundred metres away from the clearing of the training ground: A deep, but oddly quiet humming sound makes itself known for but a second. Sakura notices the noise, but cannot identify a cause or a source. She sees no need to sidetrack her current objective, and so she pushes onward.

Fifty metres later, she hears the same sound. A deep and hoarse drone, a by-product of physical exertion, rings through the dense wood ahead of her. This time, she doesn't need extra data, for the source is the object she is eagerly seeking out. It's _his_ voice, projecting the uncomfortable nature and sensation of his training-induced aches and pains. Sakura has never expected anything less, which is the reason for the tender smile that quickly graces her smooth, cream-tinted face. If Naruto felt no pain, then there certainly wouldn't be any gain; ergo, he would constantly push until he could move no further. Such dedication was to be admired, not just in its application of his training, but also in his attempts to capture her heart.

It doesn't matter to Sakura that Naruto's last invite for a date was more than three months ago, most likely because it was the last time she was going to say 'no' to him, she's more than confident that he's still waiting for her. As far as she has seen to this day, the glint in Naruto's eyes never appears whenever his gaze falls upon another female; it's a look solely reserved for her, _his_ Cherry Blossom. Simply awarding herself the title in her head makes her feel giddy and it urges her to push off another limb with renewed anxiety.

The same hoarse tone rattles through the wooded plain, gruff and - ironically enough - still full of energy. Naturally, the hyperactive one in her group of friends happens to be the one with endless stamina. She smiles brightly, but what shyness she has breaks through as she looks down, observing as the branches pass below her in thin lines of brown and black, and the grass beneath that seemingly lost in a bottomless pit of darkness.

Thinking with some amount of tact, she decides that breaking straight out into the open and interrupting his training would be a dampener on her opportunity. She was ready to admit to herself that his body was a positive to the negative of her eyes, attracting and magnetising her gaze to his shining skin, coated in a veneer of his sweat. To watch from the bushes as that body moves with practiced fluidity and conditioned suppleness would be a sight that any woman would have a hard time forgetting. Sakura should know, she may have passed the blonde off for so long, but now she was struggling to forget his statue of a physique.

It was nothing like Sasuke's. No, his was pale, with very few detailing dips and lines of any muscle. If one had never heard of the Uchiha before, their initial thought would be that his body was weak, and thus would assume the same about his skill. They would be dead before their brain could comprehend that he had already moved behind them in an almost unrivalled burst of speed and run them through.

Naruto, on the other hand, had a light tan that brought out his exuberant hair and sharp eyes of bright sapphire. As if it were divine intervention, he had been graced with a body that showed off his lean build, the bulges of his muscles drawing thin lines of shadow over his skin like a calligraphy brush, but was nowhere near powerful enough to overwhelm the eyes. It's no wonder that he's started to get some not-so-secret admirers.

But Sakura has one up on those 'newcomers': They don't know Naruto like she does, and that's one of the greatest advantages she can have. To understand and possess deep knowledge of the one that somebody admires, or even desires, can bring one closer than any other.

She sees the wood thin out ahead of her, like a black doorway retracting and breaking its resistance to the brightening night sky. It's so peaceful, so quiet, so…_un_-Naruto like that it feels like his appearance would ruin the setting.

'_On the contrary'_, Sakura muses, _'Naruto is often the one setting the scene anyway.' _Her stomach is quivering and her breathing is shaky. She's not dreaming at all, she's really doing this; and as much as she wonders why, she doesn't want to stop. He's wanted her for so long, even after all the beatings, all the harsh words, all the torment…the confession…and he has never pushed her; he's just…waited, waited to see what will become of them. She has made this decision of her own accord, the decision to discover exactly what she has missed out on for the past number of years.

Sakura's head is suddenly irrigated of wishes and 'what ifs', her mind immediately becomes focused on the now…all because she hears another moan. This time, however, it's a loud…smooth…high-pitched moan.

A _woman's_ moan.

Before Sakura knows it, she's feeling the soft, cropped grass brush against her exposed toes as she falls to terra firma and kneels in complete silence. If this were training for an assassination, her potential target has no chance of hearing her. Her brow is knit in concentration, and her eyes narrow as they lock on the clearing twenty metres ahead. The black curtain ahead of her, devoid of light, turns to dark blue as the bodies of vapour hanging above the forest begin to thin out, waiting for the correct moment to reveal the silver orb overlooking the land. She creeps with caution and anxiety as the brush loses its lush density.

Why is her stomach feeling so strange? Putting aside the fact she had just daydreamed of initiating some more-than-friendly contact with the jinchuuriki not three minutes ago, she suddenly feels restrained, nervous…worried. Where did this second voice come from? Who was it? Why was it there?

She cycles the question around her brain over and over, wishing that she knows, or has the means to find out. But it's then that she realises: Naruto has the ability – to her, a curse - of the Oiroke no jutsu.

Of course, it's likely that he's moved on to something less physically demanding; practicing his self-taught seductive techniques, the very same that could stain the gleaming white robes of the Sandaime red with his own nasal discharge.

Although Sakura disapproves of the technique, 'disapprove' meaning 'beat-the-ever-loving-snot-out-of-Naruto-for-using-it', she knows he always strives to better it when he has the time…and the privacy. She smiles jokingly to herself as her eyes grace over the tickly blades of green growth passing beneath her boots. Perhaps she's becoming too analytical; honestly, it shouldn't be anything to worry about.

Ten metres to go: The dark blue becomes a slowly illuminating violet. The light of the celestial body above them punches needle holes through the fluffy cloud line, polka-dotting the land around her like landing fireflies. This would certainly be a scene for her to remember. Such tranquillity, such harmlessness, and such peace…it's all so beautiful, and a sight that she feels has to be shared with another.

Sakura knows the voice of the female Naruto, squeaky, laced with what's meant to be charm…and it most certainly _isn't_ the airy, breathy, _deeply __feminine_ tone creating the words that hit the treeline, flooding past it and into any ears that lay beyond.

"So…so good…"

The only evidence of Sakura's gasp is through her nose, her lips suddenly tightening in an attempt to decrease her volume. She's beyond curious now…just what on Earth is going on? She takes one step forward, and one to the right, hoping to peek around a wide tree trunk sat not five metres from the clearing. She feels the grating texture of the age-old wood under her fingers, using it as both her anchor and support as she turns and sticks her back to its curved shape. A step to the left, and she sees the bushes marking the border of the plain, another step has a dark, thin silhouette of a leg peek out from behind the rest of the tree.

She may not see everything at the moment, but the figure the leg belongs to must only be around eight metres away from her. The next step to the left becomes the last, because the pair of bare, muscular and hair-peppered legs she can see is joined by two smooth, slightly-glossed and rounded limbs ended by two petite feet. The additional body parts are angled forward from their owner's hips, supported by mud-painted knees from which pale but solid calves extend back, parallel to their equals inside of their spread position.

Her eyes follow up the fully exposed skin of the person who is definitely not her teammate. The tops of the mystery legs widen as they move up and meld into the pelvis to which they are permanently attached. Sakura can only watch the back of these unknown thighs curve without any flawed seam into the two rotund and completely naked quarter-spheres of the unidentified addition's rear…one half of which is being confidently grasped between spread, equally tanned fingers that bend to claw the mound into their possession. The soft flesh gives under the grip, creating a new miniature range of hills across the skin that slips between the complacent appendages.

Sakura can't move, she can't speak…she can't even _breathe_. She's so close, close enough to hear his rugged breathing, close enough to see the rising and falling of his inclined chest, close enough to hear the smacking sound created by the movement of his lips…close enough to see a bridge of saliva connecting them to…to…

"You really like them, don't you?" The voice from before speaks down to the body below it, like a mother figure looking down to a body they are nursing; somehow…Sakura partially recognises the voice, but the situation its owner is in makes a proper confirmation unreliable for the time being. The breath behind the voice is harsh, giving it an audible mixture of gruffness and tiredness. The response is minimal, but it is still a response nonetheless. A deep but gentle hum is birthed from the totally unrestrained chest of the anonymous woman.

"I love them." That familiar masculine tone speaks in honesty and without any restrained enjoyment…or lust. The voice is silenced as a previously hidden hand tangles its fingers into his hair and pulls him back toward the visible round, fleshy globes that he had spoken of so fondly. Another light moan reaches back to the treeline and latches onto their uninvited guest's ears.

Sakura cannot believe a single word she hears or any action she sees, she knows she has happened upon something whose memories should only ever be shared by two people; but the simple fact that the spiked, messy hair and gruff, coarse tone belongs to the young man who had denied her a date mere hours ago is enough to steal away her common sense's option of leaving him to his…ministrations. Sakura feels a tightening in her chest, such as would be felt in a moment of fear, and akin to the feeling of finding out one had just performed an action that would earn them a criminal record.

'_This _can't_ be Naruto.'_ Is the wish that floods her brain, but she knows better than to doubt in the face of irrefutable facts; facts such as the markings on the male's face and how they bend what little amount of light there is, and the tell-tale, sleeveless vest that lies in a crumpled pile near his head…forgotten, much like the other six items of clothing that sit discarded close by. The only nearby evidence that any clothes have actually been worn sits orbiting the _bitch's_ waist; a dark looking piece of soiled material that sits scrunched above her lower half, the protrusion of her rear end denying what Sakura can discern as a skirt from falling and covering her…below-the-belt assets.

The final blow comes as the..._whore_…pushes her quarry flat onto his back by his shoulders and leans down to push her entire body flush against him…

…Except her hips, which rise up and slightly forward, ready to fully lavish in the feeling of what she had earlier claimed was 'so good'.

Sakura has a metaphorical front row seat. She's hoping to any God that the pair's bareness has not progressed as far as she had initially feared, but it appears that she is simply hiding amongst the wood to witness more upsetting - yet memory-creating - sights. She feels the sting of rampant, restricted tears stabbing at her lower eyelids as she clearly sees the extent to which these two have united.

The very organ that truly deems him a man stands firm, snugly accommodated halfway into the hollow, warm cavern that the woman was so easily allowing him to feel. Even with the low lighting, the onlooker stands in upset awe at the glistening of her quarry's hardened skin, lathered by the natural lubricant that lines the inside of the _slut's_ genital passage. The sight, for Sakura, is damning to her feelings, and yet she can't look away; the sheer eroticism has her held like the north and south of a pair of magnets.

The woman's hips descend, engulfing more of the young man's length. Sakura can only watch with utter helplessness as her teammate's flesh vanishes inch by inch inside his…lover…even though the rosette is incredibly reluctant to call her that. As the top of the woman's opening reaches Naruto's small patch of pubic hair, her moan expands outward in all directions without an echo. Sakura makes out the light hisses of a whisper, but her attention is swiftly drawn back to the _bitch's_ pelvis as it rises once again, even as her naked chest still remains welded to that of the man below her.

There's no pause this time, and the woman drops herself the moment her height peaks. She moans once more, a breath makes her unintelligible drone sound grainy, but the pleasure she experiences can somehow be understood from it. She rises yet again, still keeping her body parallel to the man inside her, and Sakura sees that the woman is now supported by not one, but two greedy hands grasping at her rear, assisting her path and manipulating her force. The cycle of rising and falling continues, and soon the long moans are replaced with short breaths with intermingling squeals, and within seconds they become part of a duet with the deep, but not overly enraptured groans of the man who repeatedly pushes her down upon his erection.

Despite the bittersweet taste of the union that fitted her own agenda, Sakura takes a moment to look upon the scene with mild professional selfishness. Even from the great Tsunade, Konohagakure's most talented medic-nin of the previous generation, Sakura has only been taught the theory of sexual relations through words, illustrations and the occasional self-exploration. Never has she seen the raw act, even in such disgustingly beautiful detail.

A new movement breaks her contemplations. The pinned male brings his feet in towards himself, forcing his knees to bend up to the slowly-dissipating clouds. Sakura assumes the action is to support the harlot sat atop him. Although not the actual reason, it is partly true. The next few sounds from the woman aren't moans or mewls…they're full-on screams.

His bent knees give Naruto the leverage to lunge his hips up, forcing his manhood upward, stuffing the woman whose lower cheeks he's possessively clamping. Every time their pelvises meet, the woman's end is pushed further into the air, the sheer force of her lover's thrusts being easily demonstrated by her passionate recoil.

Sakura finally detaches her back from the tree that is beginning to support almost her entire weight and turns to fully face the sight. With brow crooked upward and hands dead still, she takes one cautious step, and then another. She's now three metres from the clearing, six from the coital couple, but a waist-high border of shrubberies blocks her from total sight. She doesn't dare move closer, and forces herself to kneel in the soft greenery below her, using the lush hedges to blanket all but her eyesight.

She looks back up after having found her placement and finds that Naruto has pushed himself onto his knees, body totally upright, which makes the position of his partner all the more enticing. The connected duo has now been placed in a position that gives Sakura a good profile view directly from their right.

"Oh, God…you're…ah…!" Naruto's hands still eagerly clamp to the woman's round ass, while she herself has her arms wrapped behind his neck; one hand fisting the back of his hair, the other circling to behind the opposite shoulder. Her legs hang wide apart on either side of the man supporting her, inviting him to bury himself inside her sacred channel. Their cheeks rub together in a somewhat loving embrace that definitely does not reflect the sexuality of their real connection. Like before, the woman seems to have no say in her movements; the commanding grip on her buttocks pulls her into his pelvic gyration, once again forcing his erection deep into her body. The result has her forming sentences that are cut off by the next thrust, reducing her verbal limitations to nothing but lustful grunts and yelps.

Sakura's goal to identify the _tramp_, founded by her disbelief and internal lividness, becomes scrapped as she hears her teammate…her _loyal_ teammate and friend…spew a mirrored taunt at his lover's ear through a breathy, intimidating growl.

"And you love…_this_…don't you?" He emphasises the pronoun, 'this', with a severe thrust, pulling the woman's posterior towards him as he jointly forces himself inside her with a single thrust of unrivalled power and speed before returning to a complacent rhythm. Sakura's shock rapidly swells and is easily demonstrated by her upturned brow and parted lips. The woman cries towards the heavens as she feels her passage fill with the solid flesh, the air she gains from her gasps is swiftly stolen from her lungs as she tries to desperately answer.

"Ye-es! I want it so mu-uch…" Her speech breaks apart under the force of Naruto's continued penetrations, the sheer strength of which disrupts the airflow through her vocal chords. From Sakura's viewpoint, the heads of the lovers break apart and sumptuously stare one another down, all while their bodies shake from rattled breaths and rhythmic hip gyrations, before their lips rapidly collide.

Sakura is close enough to hear the slippery smacking of their saliva against one another, to see the rapturous curling of the woman's toes…close enough to catch the glistening veneer of sexual discharge covering Naruto's manhood. It's an organ that Sakura is just starting to become curious about, but not on any man, though; she only wished to dedicate her imagination to how Naruto's phallus may have been designed. Seeing its thick outline, its status as 'broken in' defined by the juices painting its surface, Sakura finds her brain switching off and dedicating her mind to what the piece of flesh could do.

"Harder…" The woman groans, what looks to be her waist-length hair flows freely out and back in with perfect timing against the sensual and lusted pounding of its owner's vagina. Naruto lets off a nasal grunt as he takes brief pauses during his extractions before forcing himself as deep as he can go using all the energy he can willingly spare. The only sign of Sakura's building, but nonetheless reluctant arousal is the gliding of her tongue across her upper lip, the retraction of the wet appendage parts her mouth, allowing deep, hungering breaths to escape. Fortunately for her, the increase in volume of the couple before her keeps her own growing pants of lust secret.

"Harder…fuck me harder…" The vehemence behind the begging voice is contrasted by its fragile tone. Contrary to the order, Naruto stops, but the woman engulfing him is too concerned in regaining her stolen breath to start complaining. The sudden onset of silence sends shivers down Sakura's spine as she rapidly tries to supress her hormonal venting, the fear of being caught suddenly reigniting in her mind. Before she can tidy her thoughts and begin to comprise an escape plan, a muffled thud reaches her location, causing her to look up.

Naruto, still on his knees, is suddenly looming over his partner as she lies flat on her back. Sakura can see the silhouette of the woman's chest rising and falling at speed; it makes her suddenly wonder, from out of nowhere and without any real reason, how she would be fairing if she were the one in this situation. On top of that, the couple are no longer joined, and Naruto's full erection continues to stand proud. The lower lip of the couple's uninvited guest slips under her upper teeth, a testament to her attempted suppression of desires as she looks at his rigid length. Seeing it even without full light makes her wonder what could be done to her, and it makes her aware of an uncomfortable shift of fabric occurring at the base of her shorts.

Before her thoughts can progress into the acts themselves, she suddenly witnesses a side of Naruto that even she has very rarely - if ever - seen. With a workman's grunt and very little grace, Naruto's right hand reaches for the right side of the woman's hip while his left grabs behind her right knee; he forces her onto her side none-too-lightly and props her leg over his left shoulder, straddling its floor-bound twin. Only then does Sakura realise that the woman is now directly facing the tree line in which she is hiding.

"You really are a dirty girl," Naruto growls as he takes short steps on his knees back up her body. All he gets - and what Sakura hears - in response is a light mewl of humility. Just as the dominant half of the coupling re-enters the half that so freely invites him, Sakura duly notices the silvery glow of the sun's opposite through the slowly-vanishing cloud cover. Another moan pulls the rosette's eyes away from the gradually-unveiled sky, directing her gaze to a scene that inch by inch is revealed to the moon's scrutiny.

Finally, she sees the vividness of Naruto's hair mixed with the dull white of the moonshine; at last, she can admire the unobstructed view of her teammate's chiselled physique. Now, she can prepare to fully appreciate just what makes up Uzumaki Naruto, but she can't help but submit to the pain of discovering that Naruto is having sex and, dare she think it, relations with another woman. The shadow of the cloud steadily rescinds, and Naruto's tanned skin; his chest, his arms, his stomach…all bounce the lunar luminosity back toward wet jade eyes, allowing them to fill in the puzzle of just what sat underneath his clothing. However, as the dark blanket peels away from the horizontally jumping hips of the pleasure's recipient, Sakura finds her breath lodging in her throat.

The crumpled and scrunched remains of the skirt hugging the woman's waist - that could once be almost be mistaken for a low-spectrum grey or plain black - is revealed to be a vivid purple. Even though Sakura notes this, she's far too captivated by the now-visible pumping of her teammate's erection inside the woman's weeping canal of lust to pay it too much attention. The details she can see from her current distance are quite overwhelming. The way the dancing and meandering blood vessels under his skin makes his organ darker than the rest of his body, and how the runoff of the woman he drives into makes the organ shine like a polished baton brings the discernible feeling of uncomfortable stickiness between the involuntary voyeur's legs to the forefront of her mind.

Her deep breathing returns, and is followed by a combat-tempered hand that snails from the side of her stomach and down to the waistband of her shorts. She's lucky to realise that the moonlight now has her in its high sights as well, and reflexively drops her shoulders closer to the ground, using her free left hand to support herself. But as she prepares to piggyback on the pleasurable sights ahead of her through the semi-obstructive leaves dividing it and her eyes, a bright curtain, similar in colour to Naruto's hair, flashes into Sakura's line of sight. The few millimetres that her eyes move fire the most hampering, shocking and upsetting scene thus far towards her.

One tear that had previously been restrained breaks away from her widened eyelids and trickles down her cheek, the only true sign of distress as the rosette powerlessly watches the gaping jaw, the semi-bared teeth, the unbound long white-blonde locks and tightly-shut eyes…of her best friend, the one whose flower shop in which she had found Naruto helping.

But now Sakura wonders one thing: How was Naruto _helping_ before she arrived?

"G-god!" The rapture-laced voice that Sakura once had on the tip of her tongue becomes easily identified once its owner's face is exposed to the hidden kunoichi. Despite the absence of the girl's biggest feature - which, to Sakura, was the large mass of hair that sat over and obstructed at least half of her face – her pointed chin, the gentle curve of her cheekbones and just the colour of her hair in general is enough for Sakura to disavow the possibility that this person - whom she had adamantly labelled 'a whore' in her head mere minutes before - could be anybody else.

Uzumaki Naruto is having ardent, heavy, unprotected sex…with Yamanaka Ino.

Every thrust of Naruto's hips captivates Sakura's eyes, and she can't fight back against her inadvertent hormonal response as it makes her watch his penis sink deep inside her best friend. Soon enough, the only thing the woman he is pleasuring can do is mindlessly moan for every time her lover plunders her body, her mentality now completely dedicated to expressing, and further begging for, unending sexual pleasure.

To Sakura, every scream feels like a laugh in her face, a two-faced sound of mockery. She and Ino had regularly talked about prospective romantic partners, and what was Ino's reply?

"_I haven't got anybody right now__, but I haven't really been looking, either. Nobody's jumped out at me as of late."_

She said those words _two weeks ago_.

Before her mind can revert back to its state of logical thinking, Sakura jumps at the feeling of feather light caresses against the apex of her legs. She briefly looks down, and finds her fingers slowly snaking back and forth across the fabric settling directly over her own _protected_ - but dampening nevertheless - lower lips, all completely against her conscious will. Sakura knows her body, and she may suck her closed lips between her teeth all she wants, but even the tiny tickling sensation that dances around her covered clitoris makes her mind sink to the more primal areas of human thought.

Her…_friend's_…rapidly-increasing moans only help to sink her mind further into the gutter. She looks up, but the way in which the side of Ino's body scrapes against the ground with every thrust that fills her and her breasts jump against gravity only makes her want to give in…right at the spot upon which she is kneeling.

Just as Sakura pulls her exploring hand up to start flicking at the waistband of her shorts, the name of her original target of the night is screamed across the grassy plain, the echo of the cry dancing between the trees. Her attention caught once more, Sakura continues to watch in silence.

With a hoarse groan, Naruto pushes his body forth once more, but he keeps himself fully buried inside his lover, still holding her leg close to his chest and over his shoulder. Ino's volume decreases, but the high pitched vocalisations of her residual feelings of pleasure remain. Sakura, however, does not have such experienced knowledge of this, being a virgin herself.

A minute disguised as an eternity passes and Naruto looks to be keeping himself welded to his partner, but a heavy sigh escapes his lips and links in with the slow withdrawal of his hips.

Sakura's stomach suddenly starts to burn as the very definition of Naruto's passion is fully exposed to the light; the reddened, bulbous, curved and shining head drips with a semi-translucent, viscous fluid that impacts without a splash against the smooth skin of the grounded leg beneath it. Begin to admire and fantasise she may, but the happy sighs of different octaves from the post-coital couple distract her to the point of frustration. She finds herself craving some kind of similar feeling, but when she sees Naruto's pale essence trickle from between Ino's swollen lips like sap from an aging tree, her anger returns at the wordless possessiveness her friend is exhibiting over the substance.

She can't watch anymore, she can no longer sit without the ability to act while her two closest friends engage in such filthy yet heavily arousing acts. She can't handle the gloats that the images of Ino's tired, sexually-satisfied body fire in her direction, even while the offending seductress is totally unaware of her transgressions. In her wake, Sakura leaves a sensual and almost romantic lip connection punctuated by a wrestling of tongues as she turns and mindlessly paces away.

"You're amazing…" She hears the faint words of the flower fanatic brush against her ears like a gentle coastal breeze. Like the straw that broke the camel's back, just the complimentary words on their own force Sakura to shut her eyes, desperately trying to hold back the emotions that her mind – now returning to normalcy – unwillingly bring to the forefront of her upset. Looking back once more, if only to analyse she is a safe distance away, she silently leaps into the shadow-veiled trees, ready to return to her apartment and rack her mind in saddened seclusion. The only evidence of her ever being there are two blades of grass, each with a single droplet of water hanging from their tips.

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><p><strong>AN: Wow...that chapter was longer than I intended it to be. This is one of the reasons for why its release is late.**

**If you didn't figure it out (I'm not sure if I made it clear enough during the scene), the scene in the flower shop takes place only about ten minutes after the prologue. I wasn't trying to cover that up, I was just hoping that people would notice it from the way I wrote it out.**

**I have three reasons for why this chapter is late:  
>1. I found out a few weeks back (when this chapter was still a figment of my imagination) that I passed my first year of university...by 0.28% of a mark (blame the catastrophic failure of my previous laptop for that). Fortunately, it's still a pass, so my time has been swapped from worrying about having to redo modules to getting ready to move back to Stafford and into the flat I've procured with some other friends.<br>2. Just as I was getting to my self-imposed deadlines, I kept adding more and more shit to the scenes I already had as well as the scenes I was working through from scratch. That, and it also seems that the time I THINK I need to write just one scene is actually a lot less than the time I ACTUALLY need to write just one scene.  
>3. While I haven't been directly affected by the riots in England, my sister lives in Birmingham, and she was close to one of the violence hot spots, so I was worrying more about her than I was a fictional story...sue me.<strong>

**So yeah, you can see where 'Post Training Relief' came from now, can't you? Obviously, I omitted the daydream that founded the body of 'PTR', because it really had no relevance to this storyline.**

**If I'll be honest...I don't like this chapter too much. I feel that some of it seems rushed. To be honest, I just wanted to get this POS out of the way. I hope you like the lemon, but I guess 'big words' are just too much for some people. To be honest, that kind of excuse pisses me off, but hey, I guess not getting straight to the sex pisses people off in return.**

**Once again, big words was the main criticism for the prologue. I can genuinely understand why people would say that, but I have a problem with writing immaturely. By 'immaturely', I mean like this: "He slammed his cock inside her wet pussy and pounded her so hard into the ground that she was tasting the centre of the Earth." I don't like writing in such a simplistic manner, because I personally feel that it degrades my intelligence and, to some extent, my reputation. I like doing descriptive writing, but I don't want it to be too simple. I suppose, as Screamindivr145 pointed out in their review, I like the more poetic approach.**

**My original intention for this chapter was under 9000 words, but it would seem that my desire to flesh the scenes out broke my typing fingers yet again. I guess it means more bang for your buck, right?**

**The 'Just Reward' poll is now closed. Temari won over Samui by 3 votes.**

**So...here's what's coming out after Chapter 9 of 'The Diary of an Ex-Businessman', based on the current scores:**

**1. 'Face The Music' - NaruIno - Chapter 4  
>2. <strong>**'Sun and Ice' - NaruSamu - Chapter 1  
><strong>**3. 'She Made Him Wait' - NaruIno - Chapter 2  
><strong>**4. 'Kirigakure no Ha' - NaruMei - Chapter 1**


	3. Fantasy versus Reality

**A/N: Right, somehow I've actually managed to upload something. No doubt what you want to do is read this hellbound chapter and get on with...whatever you might do when reading a lemon...or two. That's right, there are two in this chapter. Mostly fanfagging on my part for myself, but the last scene actually does something to push the story along.**

**Anyway, I'll explain all in the A/N at the end. Please be sure to read it before jumping to conclusions. **

**Anyway, enjoy!**

**Oh, and I've given this fic a new anime-esque OP. 'Once Adreamed' by Christian Alvestam. Have a listen to it, it's awesome!**

* * *

><p><strong>She Made Him Wait<strong>

**A Naruto Fan Fiction**

**Chapter 2: Fantasy versus Reality**

**Beta read by MillerIce**

A gust whispers its passing.

A cat mewls its attention-seeking purpose to the uncaring neighbourhood from atop a garden fence.

An abandoned newspaper sheet dances across the gravelled street like a wary pedestrian.

Night-time Konoha - for all the activity of its daylight counterpart – demonstrates its lonely, empty existence to whatever soul may still be wondering its avenues. The caring moonlight is driven away by the harsh lighting of the most populated drinking establishments and restaurants, splitting the village into the districts of high life…and no life. The soft audible caresses of wind are pitted against distant rattles of dense chatter and drunken laughter.

Haruno Sakura never bothers to notice these tiny quirks. The peacefulness of her environment is lost on the congregating and haunting memories of witnessed debauchery and faded inner questions.

With that said, though, the questions are never completed, let alone answered, continually cut off by ghostly echoes of pleasured groans and squeals of bodily rapture. Every question is cut off by another. No answers, no closure, not even the surety that what she had seen was even real.

The newspaper is crushed beneath her running stride, the stones in the path grinding holes through the inked material before the lifting of her boot puts it at the wind's mercy.

The existence of genjutsu isn't beyond her…yet it all seemed far too insane, even the thought of somebody conjuring that scene as the imagery for an illusion was just so farfetched that it almost made her want to laugh.

However, laughing she was not.

That's why she's so chilled to the bones, frantically wiping at her eyes to rid herself of any proof that what she saw affected her. The air blasting into her face as she fervently runs back to her apartment doesn't help in any way, either.

'_Fuck me harder…'_

Her teeth grit, she's angered by the rebellion of her own memories. The recollections of the training ground help her in no way. Even as the street lights blur past her vision in yellow streaks, she's reminded of blond hair: two different shades, two different styles.

Two different lovers.

'_You love _this_, don't you?'_

Thoughts of his growl stab at her stomach, almost making her lose balance on the next stride.

And then there was the _smell_…

She remembers the cleanliness of the air and savoury scent of soil, all too soon finding it battled by the stuffy and intoxicating fumes of sweat and stale deodorisers. It was almost a mix of sweet and sour, multiple bodily fluids coagulating into a thick musk of bedroom-brewed incense.

She can smell a mere fraction of it on her fingers, fingers that lost the will to resist, fingers that tried to have her succumb.

The wetness and tingling of nerves is still harboured at the apex of her thighs, further exaggerated with each step she makes. It only seeks to warm her belly, corrupt her brain, make her want to be rid of it like a perpetual sub-dermal itch; one that always remains but that no amount of scratching could possibly quash.

It would need to be dealt with _deep down_.

Her front door bears no witness to her frantic movements, gliding open and closed with patience and relaxed precision. Outside she had a want, a _need_ to run away as far and as fast as possible. She was not within her comfort zones, far too overwhelmed by the sights of chiselled, naked skin and the grates of exalted moans. Inside she has her cocoon, her sanctuary where all contemplations are made safe and secure.

She had weighed up the pros and cons of asking Naruto out in this apartment. Eventually she had gone for it.

A lot of good that did her.

A light bulb sparks to life, furling night's curtain away from polished wall tiles and glistening ceramics. The sink sparkles as a tap gushes forth into the hands of its owner, flinging glittering droplets back to join the excess that swirls into the abyss beneath. Her reddened cheeks feel the cold shock of the water in her hands, but her rushing blood rebuilds the heat within moments. She bathes her face again, but once more the blooming warmth fights back.

She looks up, meeting an imposter in a circular mirror. She would have believed herself only barely affected by the earlier shocks, yet the alter-ego staring at her in the droplet-spattered reflection is beset by bloodshot eyes, small creases supporting her lower eyelids, dishevelled hair explosively drawn across her forehead and lips downturned into a malignant frown.

_His buttocks clenching, thrusting his hips into hers._

The image flashes behind her eyes, forcing them closed and further clarifying it.

_Her gleaming teeth exposed to the moon, split apart in a desperate cry for more._

She shakes her head, but the sound remains plastered inside her ears.

'_She doesn't know anything…'_

Such words were never said, but paranoia was never going to be far away.

"Go away…" She harshly whispers to the defiant reflection.

_His organ so straight and rigid, each inch hungrily swallowed by swollen petals, only to be regurgitated and consumed again in a lubricated cycle._

She charges out of the bathroom - too embroiled in her psyche to turn off the light – and charges into her bedroom down the hall. The drapes, still drawn open from earlier, soothe half of the room with a soft glow gifted by the lunar surface. She would have considered it pretty if not for what it had unveiled to her prying eyes.

It was as if the goddess of the stars herself was displeased with her voyeurism.

"_You're amazing…"_

_He was kissing her, sucking at the lips of the deceitful cow._

A half of her impending shout of frustration is caught in her throat, what escapes bounces harmlessly between the walls and ends in more silence. Her bare feet march her to the curtains, adrenaline-quivered arms haphazardly yanking them closed sans a tiny fillet of light. Still her core tingles, harasses her with a deep burning. She can't ignore it any longer.

Her thoughts seek to break her, she believes she must retaliate or at least soothe her anger. Still she does not know if it actually happened.

If someone can give her strain using imagined scenes, she can find relief in her own.

Shaking hands hastily unfasten her skirt and fling it toward the closest corner of the room to remain forgotten until the morning light.

Her knees mark her mounting of the bed, causing the mattress to sink and yield to her need for support. For all their tendencies of destruction, soft hands glide over the comforter and pull her up to the pillows, keeping her upright and facing the wall. Her eyes close again, relying on willpower alone to irrigate earlier upsets.

_She can see sunlight, azure skies and brown-green blurs of the forest in the distance as she spins and somersaults like it's a second nature. There's a kunai in her right hand, the downward-facing point swinging to the left and trying to slash at her target._

He_ appears in her periphery._

_A torn, grass-stained vest of black and orange teases tanned skin beneath it. Gleaming white teeth are grit as his torso leans back from the attack, lips turning it into a grin as the evasion proves successful. Her free fist lunges for the chest but he sidesteps to her right and steps forward, his hair leaving a brief yellow blur._

_His trailing arm clamps onto the wrist supporting her weapon, she's forcefully spun back towards him by the grip, but he continues around to trap her punching arm. His arm makes it under hers, lifting it before planting his palm on the back of her neck. Her restrained limb is locked helplessly in the air, she ejects struggled breaths as he brings her own hand - complete with kunai - to bear against her throat._

_That's the least of her concerns, for his chest is magnetised to her back. A quick shake of resistance against his grip translates the change in his muscles from soft to sturdy through her shoulder blades as he tries to keep her shackled._

'_We said no grapples'_, she can imagine herself droning in complaint.

'_You sure, Sakura-chan? Or are you just saying that to avoid admitting you got beat?'_

Through her lucid fantasy, she has him whisper the jest right beside her ear, hoping to feel a tickling sensation from the phantom heat in his breath.

'_Fine, if you want to play that way.'_

_Her backside pushes back into his groin._

She wills him to go with it…

…._returning the favour with his own clothed grinding._

Her hand comes to life, starting at her knee and caressing upward along the smooth skin of her thigh and orbiting around her waist. Fingertips sample the silken fabric of her shorts before spreading out, allowing her palm to lie comfortably against the curve of her rear. She can feel it now, the grinding of Phantom Naruto's hips against her posterior brought to life by her mimicking hand.

_The sounds of his lusty sighs swarm her hearing, contort her mind and stir her stomach. The hand he uses to control her kunai eases off, allowing her to drop the weapon completely. He grabs her hand almost as quickly as he'd released it, but she somehow feels powerless under his touch, unable to resist or compromise._

But that's because she doesn't wish that of her fantasy avatar.

_Still they stand as if embroiled in a packed nightclub: lower bodies constantly touching, refusing to end their mutual groping. His right arm persists in manipulating her, moving her arm across her front, forcing her own fingers to feel the quickened rising and falling of her chest and the earthquake of her heartbeat. She shivers as she feather-lightly grazes her nipple, budding and begging for further attention from under her top, before his fingers force hers to close and grasp at her mound._

Her right hand complies, skirting over her vest and squeezing at her bosom. A gasp escapes her lips.

_The arm he has pinned above her head remains, but her forearm is granted a small range of movement. She uses it wisely, pulling her hand back to palm at his head and pull his face beyond her shoulder, lips desperately seeking a partner. They lock, silently telling of their admiration in a sloppy exchange of saliva and tongue probes. He pulls away, halting all protests in her throat as his weight shifts forward, forcing them both to their knees, torsos still locked and undulating._

"Unh…" Her closed eyes clench further, emphasising her guttural moan. The middle and index fingers of the hand stroking her rear connect and bestow extra pressure, imitating what she wishes to be Phantom Naruto's length hardening under the confines of his pants as he pushes against her.

'_What do you want?'_ She hears as a distant echo, a voice laced with grainy undertones but oozing domination.

'_I…I want…'_ Her avatar stutters in a whisper.

'_Tell me.'_ He insists, _'Tell me you want this.'_

"I want you in me." Her voice resonates, breaking the black silence of her very real bedroom. Her eyes flash apart, pupils flickering in the additional, though only minor, change in lighting.

She can't believe she's just said that aloud. All other admittances of her desires were done in the full privacy of her head. Only inside was she sure of the wants of her heart, never was she going to admit them to anybody else unless assured that it would remain confidential.

Even when alone in her bedroom, she considers the darkness and the moon strangers.

Even so, the confession only seeks to fuel the want. Her eyelids seal up once more, reforming the scene of her mind's eye.

'_I've always wanted to hear you say that.'_

Ghostly lips drag over her neck, invisible fiery welts coursing over her skin completed by surges of impulse charging through her muscles. The hand on her rear crawls up to the waistband of her shorts.

_Her left arm is finally freed yet she keeps it there, frozen as his hand kneads at her side, squeezing at her ribs with an icy grip that still singes her._

She gasps, replacing her very real fingers with his astral tendrils_ for every moment they pry at her shorts and peel them away from her skin, dragging the tight fabric over the spongy flesh of her ass and laying it to bridge at the centre of her thighs. He returns to her hips to divest them of her last barrier, stripping her soiled and sticky underwear to rest with her unwanted shorts. The hand keeping her at her breast relinquishes its hold, swiftly moving to her back and forcing her onto her hands with little persuasion._

She leans over in full willingness. Her free hand fists the comforter, soft cotton between her fingertips trying to pass as the lush prickliness of grass and dampness of fresh soil.

_Still his imprisoned hard on rubs against her, his pelvis unrelenting in its teasing._

It's not fast enough…

_He's immediately unfastening his waistline button and unashamedly flaunting the loud buzz of his loosening fly._

'_Can you feel that?' He asks in a husky drone, scalding naked hardness rubbing on her, sandwiched in the cleft of her supple cheeks._

Chills shoot up her spine and congregate around her neck as the air of the room meets the dampness of her exposed flower, aching for more under the touches of her lurking fingers. They move away from her rear, down her stomach and between her thighs. Strokes with the flat pads of her fingertips change to prods with their peaks, imitating _the blunt head of his shaft as it kisses at her opening._

Her supporting arm gives, bringing her shoulders to collapse onto the mattress but still keeping her posterior raised to the phantom like a feral mating display.

'_Please…' She begs,_ "Please…_just take me_..._'_

White explodes across her vision as two fingers lunge. Her muscles contract with the touch, squeezing around the intrusion, begging it to remain. Vocal breaths spew from her throat as the invading appendages flutter inside her, sometimes splitting to double the effect of their caresses, searching out the velvety ripples in her canal and eagerly rubbing.

'_How is it?' He asks softly but with a demand still underlying._

"Unh…" Words are lost in the onslaught of pleasurable spikes flooding her cortex, degrading her speech to groans and single syllables.

_He's all the way in, every surface of his shaft contacting her in a blissful circuit, each electric spike rampaging along her nerves._

Her fingers are buried all the way, coursing nowhere near as deep as the phantom she dreams to be plundering her.

The heel of her palm inches forward, scraping against her jewel in the same way she wants _his sac to do as he urges every possible millimetre to raid her body._

"Agh! Mmm…you're so deep…" Her lips confess the desires of her fantasy to the pillow under her chin.

Another surge of her fingers - _another roll of his hips_ - and the pillow is caught in her teeth to muffle the next cry.

'_Nothing rough, sweetheart.' _She imagines him _leaning over her, chest once again melding to her back, keeping as much of their body connected in that one moment. Still his length resides inside her, each little twitch and shuffle conveyed a thousand fold through the warmth of her channel._

'_I'm only doing what you want me to do…saying what you want me to say. This is your mind, after all. You don't want me to pull out at all…you only want me to push.'_

_He does so, even with every possible part of him accommodated, he still urges his hips into her._

Her fingers mimic, trying to delve further than physically possible. Her palm scrapes her bead again, drawing a strained moan through her pillow-clenching teeth.

'_I could fuck you like I did her, you know. Make you believe you're feeling what she did. Make your body shake, turn your brain to jelly and have you screaming like a desperate whore each time I fill you.'_

"No…" Her voice is feeble and body wracked with endorphins and a lusting heartbeat.

'_But you don't want that, do you? You want me close, you want it slow and sensual…like it's almost romantic.' He scoffs. 'Since when has our relationship ever been mutual, let alone romantic?'_

"Shut up…"

'_You only just decided to act now? After all these years? After all the times you shot me down?'_

_His organ…_her hand…_pushes into her again._

"Haa…" Her abdominal muscles twitch from the spasmodic flickering of her fingers.

'_If only you had __**come**__ to me sooner.'_

_He pushes again. _She moans again.

"Naruto…"

'_It sounded better when she shouted it.'_

She recalls what he said only seconds before, about how it was her own mind sewing the words birthing from his gullet. Is she really subconsciously torturing herself? Physical pleasure and mental pain melded into a demented compound of simultaneous want and revulsion?

"Shut…guh…shut up…" She's cut off by another _prod of his hips._

Her fingers speed up if only slightly, enough to make her belly twinge as a fuse is finally ignited just behind her aching clitoris.

'_Oh, that's nice. Take it however you want, Sakura-chan.'_

The hand fisting the pillow beside her head moves downward to her zipper. Opposing the slow burn of the phantom inside her, the tab is violently ripped down to her navel, allowing each side of her vest to sink away from her body. The training top underneath is yanked up and over her bare skin, puckered nipples taking their first breaths of the night air before absorbing their share of the stimulation.

Her fingers pinch at the one on her right, a light sting spreading under her areola before she once more returns to a whole-palm caress.

_His hand is larger than hers, fondling more than she could hope to on her own. The grating callouses on his palm scrape along her milky skin._

'_They feel so soft.'_ _He mumbles into her ear with pelvis still gyrating and erection rubbing along every surface as if to scrub her of any essence but his. _

'_Hers are bigger, make her a lot curvier. And the taste…'_

A restrained sob breaches her jowls, trailed by a louder wail as her wrist speeds up twice, nearly three times as fast.

"Ah…ungh…" Deep gasps interspersed with cracked cries break the vacuum of dead-silence surrounding her bedroom. Still the moon spies on her ministrations through the crack in her curtains, a poetic judiciary advocating her own involuntary exhibitionism, much like she witnessed not half an hour before.

'_If only you could know…agh…just how much she loved it…' Being a figment of the filth-oriented partition of her psyche, even he can fail to restrain sexually-fuelled grunts. 'Then again, you do know. You were watching. You watched me fuck her to an ecstasy you'll never reach from __**this**__.'_

A third finger makes its contribution…

"Ah! God…"

Even in the coming days, Sakura will remain unable to comprehend why such taunting and mocking words – from her own twisted brain, nonetheless - hit her with a typhoon of emotion powerful enough to turn the ember in her stomach into a conflagrated rope twisting around itself one-hundredfold. Perhaps it was the pure sexuality of the words, or possibly something deeper, something protected by her exterior dominance…

'_You enjoyed watching me do her, didn't you? When you saw her face as I came inside her, when you heard her scream as she took everything I gave without protest…you wanted that to be you.'_

Her ears are ignorant of the slow ripping coming from below her as her free hand – since halting its continued squeezing of her breast - claws away at the comforter, the seams closest to her trained grip giving under the inhuman force.

She's so close now. Just replaying the images of her rebellious mind pushes her further toward sensual insanity.

"N-Naru…" Her wrist starts to tire but she pushes with all she can muster, fingers sawing in and out, palm still grinding against her nub when her appendages sink as far as she dare force.

'_Oh, wow…that's so good…' No longer is Phantom Naruto keeping himself glued to her. His hips retract and assault her again with speed. One hand solidly fists the back of her vest for leverage to pull her body back into his thrusts, each one punctuated by a familiar wet slap of flesh: a sound her memory has siphoned from the incident at the training ground._

'_Sakura…' He lets out within a grunt._

"Naruto…" Vigorously her hand continues to delve, fingers completely drenched in her own carnal juices. Beads of translucent runoff drip down her wrist, some losing their hold on her skin and splattering on the comforter below.

'_Fuck…Sakura…'_

Her thumb aggravatingly scrapes along the bundle of nerves. A scorching shock explodes through her hips, quaking all the way up her back and rocketing into her chest like a wildfire. The thumb pushes in hard. The pressure of her fingers inside her is softened by the other layers of her flesh, yet she can feel it – if only slightly – contacting behind the pleasurable ruby.

Her body's final wall of tolerance is destroyed by the double team.

"Naruto!"

Fireworks of white blotches detonate along the linings of her eyelids, sparkling unseen through the waves of nirvana that cascade all the way up her torso from the fire in her core. The muscles in her legs and stomach tense as if electrolysed, and the hand balling the ruined comforter magnifies its state as her arms pull in toward her chest, attempting in utter futility to ease her rampaging heart.

Deep and laborious gasps for air become the only trailing tell of a story penning isolated lust and deep-seated turmoil; a canny rattle seeking to only entertain the attentive ears of the blind night. The tangy scent of sweat fills her nose, immediately followed by the near sweet musk of lustful nectar as her soiled hand balls besides her face on the pillow. Shaken legs finally buckle, slipping her pelvis down to topple to the side, giving the wall before her a full view of her shameless perversion.

The afterglow in the wake of such release should have her reflecting on the events of her fantasy, of the things she could dream of him doing and the admittance of what she had finally convinced herself into chasing. Yet she is doing none of these things.

Instead the gasps seamlessly meld into weak sobs and an onslaught of tears breaching through clamped, distressed eyes. Her throat's clenching up from the stinging in her lungs, twisting her face into one of pain rather than pleasure; all through one word, a word not even spoken in reality, but from one final crack in her brain. Her satisfaction is reliant on selfishness, yet one tiny part of her remains intent on keeping alive a hard fact.

Phantom Naruto had climaxed, yes, but Sakura's name was left forgotten to time.

'_Ino!' _He had cried as Sakura willed his control to break beside her.

Ino…

Her best friend…

Once her rival in love…

Now her betrayer…

"Why her?" Whispered demands fall through her sob-broken breaths and tensed lips. Exhaustion manifests over her, having her care none for the fact her bare rear is just visible through the gap in her curtains. All she wishes to do now is sleep, pray that the seamless change from dark to light in the morning will somehow act to wipe her deranged fantasies.

Sakura's sleep that night would be restful, yet the emotional rollercoaster would do her no favours in the morning.

* * *

><p><strong>The Following Morning – Downtown Konoha<strong>

I always thought, like most youths, that the concept of warmth was just a means of making sure you didn't shiver in the cold air of a winter's night. Someone could find warmth in wearing a sweater, stoking a fire or eating a hot meal. One of the most addicting methods, though, would be that feel of waking up in the morning under a cosy comforter and ignoring the common sense of getting up in the morning.

It just never occurred to me that the morning scenario could – or actually would - pan into something so much greater in the future.

I am warm, I am cosy, I am content, I am…happy. My eyes lazily swerve across a cambered plain of ochre and see that the early hours of the morning are afoot. The curtains are closed, but that doesn't stop the sun from blasting the room with a sandy luminescence. Only 8:03 the alarm clock across from us says, and that big glowing ball has already made itself known.

That's right, I said 'us'.

As much as I often desire a big and fluffed up down-feather pillow, sometimes the squishy muscle of a relaxed pectoral has just the right amount of resistance. The heat radiating from the skin coating it and everything else gives me my own hot water plushie. The thought makes me want to giggle a little bit, to be honest.

My hand slowly strokes back and forth over a branch of valleys set apart by more soft muscle that rise and fall with perfect consistency, mapping out the lax breathing of my 'Plushie'. I don't want to lose the warmth flowing from 'Plushie' to my cheek, so I look across to take in a collarbone, then a slightly sinuous neck, and finally a face. But not just any face, a face set among a firm jaw, softly curved cheekbones and one of the messiest hairstyles to ever grace my sight.

Of course, who can forget those whiskers?

I might have been a little bit sneaky in the past and probed him about them; how he got them, what they feel like and so on. Well, to answer those particular questions: he had them from the moment he was born, courtesy of his jinchuuriki mother, and 'not much'. Turns out they're a bit like normal birthmarks, but they have no nerve endings, he doesn't feel anything from them at all.

Shame, really, the things I could have possibly done...

This whole scene, this peacefulness, it just seems so…wrong. I've seen what this boy, this _man_ has done, and I know what he's capable of. How can someone with the power to raze a village on his own sleep so quietly? Then again, I've heard tales of his restlessness on missions; it's funny trying to imagine how he could almost kill Yamato just in his sleep. At least he and I haven't had an incident like that yet; otherwise I'd be relieving him of some precious body parts.

Speaking of which…

There's just something about this...about us. We're always taught to look underneath the underneath as shinobi, expect the unexpected; and even though this was certainly unexpected, the mere idea of it - mostly due to its absurdity - had never crossed my mind until it actually happened.

Do I regret it now, in hindsight?

Absolutely not.

I've seen many fine specimens as I've grown up, a woman notices these things; but it's the ones that sit right in front of your face that you inevitably put off, your history with them clouds your typical perception. That might be why my two original teammates never looked like options; they were always _there_, as comrades and friends for year and year on end, never changing, never pushing. I grew up with them, they became my family, they became my brothers.

And then one little encounter altered the way I saw this man under my head, one little moment in which he lost himself. It all started with a simple question, but that's a tale for another time. It was what happened then and soon after that opened my eyes and made me consider him for 'candidacy'. I think back now and wonder how I never noticed it: not a single blemish on that tanned body, a smile that shines like diamonds, and eyes that you could swim in. Obviously looks often matter, but I've seen enough of how he acts to know that his density, something that did kind of put me off, is offset by his determination and unbreakable loyalty. While he hasn't always been the most honest of people, considering personal events, his often naïve innocence is enough to excuse it.

I have to say, without any hesitation, that Uzumaki Naruto's bed is something I can very easily see myself waking up in every morning; because despite what parts of him annoy me, his childishness and ramen addiction included, he is a great man in more ways than one.

He's wearing a cute little smile that's gently curling the lowest of his whiskers; very fox-like indeed. Maybe he's thinking of last night...

My God, last night, that was unbelievable. I mean, we had arranged it days before we had our little spontaneous 'session' on my lunch break at the shop yesterday, but I never thought that the sight of his body, gleaming with sweat and emanating such a musty, masculine smell would send me into such a rut. With only a gruff 'hi' to welcome me I was caught, I had to be the one to have him, and no woman would take this from me. Within moments my hands were desperately tugging at his pants and my tongue dancing a wet tango beside his. Just the possessiveness of his wandering hands roaming over my body and the heat of his breath as his lips sucked at my skin drove me wild, and I was enveloped with rapture as we took each other again, and again…and again.

We've kept it veiled in at least some amount of secrecy, but I have my reasons. He's courteous enough to allow me this much. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't embarrassed. Embarrassed, but far from ashamed; I think any sane woman with somewhat normal taste would be regretting not taking a shot at this fine man. My biggest reason for this plan would be the aforementioned unexpectedness and possible shock.

You see, one person already knows about us.

Naruto and I were getting a little touchy-feely at the back of the shop about a fortnight ago and…well, you know you've done something outrageous when Nara Shikamaru, one of the most solemn people around, loses the ability to close his gaping mouth and the only thing you can hear is his cigarette hitting the floor. He was surprised, to say the least. Fortunately, being one of the few people that could keep him in line, I made him swear on pain of his girlfriend that he wouldn't tell a soul.

But it wasn't the fact he would keep it to himself that had me so relieved; at least it was Shikamaru that found us and not-

…

Never mind.

Thinking back like that has taken away my concentration, and I find, upon collecting myself, that the hand that was once drifting over his abdomen has travelled a little lower than I had wished. But considering the distance we've already gone, I'm not afraid of dabbling near it, either.

The early hour seems to have gotten a _rise_ out of my plushie; I can feel his rigidity underneath the sheet that sits across our waists. My lower lip makes its way between my teeth as I eagerly scan his features for any sign of consciousness, and I move my hand to caress him over the fabric. I can't comment on size in comparison to other men, but all I care about is that it's more than enough to stir me into bliss. With a flat palm, I slowly stroke along his length, feeling some flaccidity while keeping my eyes on his sleeping expression. I give him a small squeeze; it pays off in the form of a dozy moan.

Bingo…

As playfully naughty as this feels, I don't smile jokingly, I actually feel my tongue drying and my heart beating faster. I don't know what has happened to me recently, but I feel like words are only our second best form of communication to our bodies, so goes the common saying of actions and words.

I pull my hand back, sliding my fingertips underneath the sheet to feel the tiny trail of hair leading down from his navel, and continue lowering it to reach his tool. My thumb teases his tip as my fingers curl and mould around him, and I slowly, gently, start to twist my wrist along him, taking in the near-artistic intricacy of his blood vessels and hardening flesh. I honestly have no idea how men can walk with this thing hanging between their legs, let alone fight.

Then again, I guess they wonder how we of the fairer sex live without one…

Tenderly my nails drag across his soft skin, but I can feel the sturdy hardness underneath. Such a strange contrast, and yet it gives so much pleasure, the human body truly is an amazing piece of biological ingenuity. Even as I goad him I keep my eyes glued to his face, silently analysing for a sign of consciousness, a flicker of an eyelid, a twitch of the lips…those tender, savoury lips, anything. It's not his face that is first to react because I feel his arm, the one he had slung behind me to stroke at my back before we fell asleep last night, slowly shift. His forearm flirts with my unbound hair before relaxing again. A rather disappointing development.

The heat of his hardness in my hand transfers through my skin, sending a tingle up my arm and an ember to ignite in my stomach. I know that feeling all too well, it's the signal telling me that I'm caught in the web. I can't overlook it now, I want this, and I want him to want this.

I just want _him_…

I'm not a shinobi at this moment, I'm not bound by an obligation to rules or law, and I can give in to vices and desires as I please for I am, right now, a woman and nothing more.

Slyly I lift myself up and out of his embrace, relinquishing the warmth of his body from mine before sliding my leg over him, planting my knees either side of his hips. I pull my hand from his erection and softly plant it against his chest; I need a support for what I plan to do. What light that has crept though the gaps in the curtains mingles and heats what it can touch, but the coolness of the air lashes at my skin and coaxes minor goose bumps. How coincidental it is that skin acts like this during sexual arousal as well.

He looks so innocent with that tiny smile and sleepy passiveness; it sometimes makes me forget that this man played a large part in ending a war. Admittedly, I love having the exclusivity of seeing such a genuinely peaceful and hidden side to this idiot; I may be a gossip queen, but there are some things that a woman just will not let slip. Things like how the texture of her man's tongue at her bosom is enough to elicit a full-body shiver, or how the slightest use of chakra from his finger to her clitoris is all that's needed before she's begging to feel him inside her.

And no, I'm not making that up.

I slide the sheet down to his knees and keep my hips hovering over his. Slowly, for the sake of the moment, I let my legs succumb to the weight of my body until the underside of his length lies flat against me. Hard and soft fleshes connect and I feel my body give way only slightly. I suck at my lips, wet my tongue and start a slow rolling of my hips, achingly rocking back and forth along him while my hands keep me upright. All I hear is the increased volume of my breathing and a mousy squeak from the mattress springs. My eyes scan over his features: the light tan, the firm structure of his muscles, the hair, and I just stare in wonder at how his body, still unconscious, has begun to rock along with me.

Please wake up…

The friction between us beckons on my body with the burning just below my stomach saying I'm doing something right. I continue to move my hips, and the dryness of our rubbing skin slowly becomes more tolerable as I feel my opening agreeing with what I want. I rock a few more times before leaning flush against him, my chest squashing against his, the skin of our stomachs touching, faces mere centimetres apart. My heated breath bounces off his chin and back to my face before I lean over and take his lower lip between both of mine. It starts slow and chaste as if I don't want to disturb him, but soon I lose myself, overcome by the need for his touch, and turn my head to repeatedly paint him with my mouth.

Finally, I feel more movement. The arm that used to be around me lazily waves across the bed, and I'm sure it's my lack of presence beside him that makes him slowly blink his eyes into accepting sight. Well, he needn't look very far to see where I've gone. I look down at him and pull my lips away, watching with some humour at how his eyelids creep apart before he can make out my body above him, at which point they start wide.

He looks at me with a mix of shock and surprise, first taking in my parted lips and burning cheeks which I'm sure are a rosy red, then snapping down and taking in our mutual nudity. The brightness of the early hours overpowers his adjusting sight, causing him to blink and squint at me.

"Wh...wha-", he tries to question, but I jump in.

I whisper a 'shush', pursing my lips and pressing a single finger to his mouth. I have a reason for doing this, and I hope that it'll give me the result I want. He quickly silences himself, but the question remains in his eyes. If that's the case, then I have ways of making him forget. I lean down again, having a small latching of gazes before I look to find what I want. Before he knows it, I'm kissing him again and occasionally prodding at him with my tongue. I won't be denied any longer, damn it.

I rest my elbows just above his shoulders and bury my hands in his hair, silently encouraging him to join me. It only takes a few seconds before I feel his lips move against mine, and I find the opening my tongue wanted. He lets out a muffled moan, and I feel his palms weld to my hips. Either way I keep rocking against him, savouring the constant lower feedback of my movement. I can tell that he's pretty much ready; he's never needed a lot of time to prepare for anything, anyway.

I pull my face away, feeling the snap of a tiny saliva string connecting our lips, and push against his ribcage to bring me upright again. From my position, I feel like I can just sit here and admire the being below me as if it…he…were on display in a museum. During my little pause for sightseeing, I watch at how his eyes lather over me; the apparent scrutiny brings about a natural nervousness in me, but there's just something about the shine in his sleep-addled gaze that rebuffs any possible negativity. I've given him that kind of look before, and I can safely say that it's meant to project nothing but dumbstruck awe and magnetising infatuation. I love it when he looks at me like that; it lets me know his mind is purged of everything but yours truly.

But how much of me is he or has he been willing to invest in? Just my body? Further than that, perhaps? I wish I knew, but I'm also scared of asking, mostly because I have no idea what his answer would be; so at the moment I sit content in the knowledge that we are mutually interested on the physical level.

I could easily find out more with very little effort. I'm a Yamanaka, a blood member of the shinobi world's most adept group of psychoanalytic professionals and daughter of the clan leader himself. One technique is all I'd need, co-operative subject or not, and I could be filing through every childhood memory, every white lie…every deep romantic and lustful feeling. If it sounds so easy, then why don't I take that route?

It's quite simple. The man below me is, despite his burden and previous loneliness, a pure-hearted soul who has not - and never will - betray the trust of those he holds dear. You could put him in a fighting ring with his own teammate, a kunai as the only weapon, with no possible means of escape, and tell them to fight to the death for their freedom. I doubt his teammate would even need to attack; Naruto would probably turn that kunai on himself. We're all afraid of dying to some smaller or larger extent, but he would embrace it with the knowledge that his own departure would prevent that of another. I've seen first-hand how devoted he is to his friends, and I would rather torture myself before doing anything that might openly spit on the trust he has in us. Even if they may be about me, Naruto's thoughts - romantic or not - will not be sullied by any invasion of his mind: I respect and admire him enough that I can promise that much at the very least.

It's unbelievable how a man so open and gutsy can make someone feel guilty at the mere _thought_ of acting unjust towards him.

Internal debates aside, there are more _pressing _matters at this moment in time…

I drop one of my hands, ghosting my fingernails through the valleys in his six-pack and reaching into the alcove created by my raised body. I grasp him again, and I can make out the dampness from his pre-cum smearing against my palm. Using that to my advantage, I stroke him with a mixture of both his and my lubricants, getting a deep hum from his closed lips. The hands that were once at my hips slide up, the roughness of his palms stroking along my ribs before I angle him upward, feeling his spongy head flirt with my skin and sending another tingle up my spine. I descend on him, build-up be damned, and gasp when I feel my body freely divide in acceptance of his shape. I can't truly fathom it; it's as if my body knows that it has found its perfect match.

His fingers squeeze lightly into my sides, but the pressure of his grasp comes second to the sensation of a cushioned friction inside me; a slow, all-encompassing growth of contact that I can't see, but can most certainly feel. I remember how our first time was slower and a lot more awkward, but we've gone through it enough times now that the actions have become second nature. Before I know it, I can feel the tops of his thighs resting against my buttocks, and his very tip, along with the rest, sitting snugly against my walls. I shut my eyes and just sit like that for a few moments, regulating my breathing, savouring the calm union and relishing his heated palms patiently stroking me.

I think he's waited enough.

I lean forward, pushing my hands into his stomach to help my legs in taking my weight. His extraction takes some of my growing levels of fluid with him, marking the start of what will become a sensuous cycle, and I feel an internal void along the depths that he has pulled away from. He's out as far as I dare allow, and I drop again at a quicker pace; the faster sense of being filled burns through my waist, down my legs and up into my chest, coaxing a low gasp from my lips.

Rise, tense, fall, roll, relax, repeat…

Faint pulses of my heart beat in my ears, and the sounds of our breathing start to echo between the walls. As I repeat my practiced motions, the sharp spikes of pleasure run under my skin, standing my hairs on end and stiffening my nipples, but succumbing to such stimuli only degrades my concentration. Without a single spoken word Naruto bends his legs, angling his thighs upwards to push into my butt while his arms, which have sat complacently until now, pull my upper body forward. After bracing my hands to a new position at the top of his pillow, I see he has put me in one of his favourite places: with my chest right in front of his face.

I almost want to laugh at how enamoured he is with my boobs, but can I blame him when I'm happily bouncing on his hips like a woman possessed? I'll admit that I'm proud of what I have, I'm not quite Hinata's size, but it's more than enough to fill Naruto's hand.

The thoughts are knocked from my mind as his pelvis, which my body had once been restraining, lazily lunges up and claps against my ass. The force from being filled again so quickly sparks a blissful explosion, and it's enough to pull a gentle groan from my voice box. He drives himself inside me again, jolting my body forward and teasingly rocking my breasts before his eyes. It's all the temptation he needs before he's craning his head and greedily sucking one of my hardened nipples between his lips. The humid wetness of his mouth collides with the cooled air across the rest of my skin, and the vacuum of his suckling has microscopic ticklish pinpricks spreading under my skin.

With his hands possessively grabbing at my rear, he pulls me down as he pushes up, filling the room with debauched sounds of skin slapping on skin, occasionally combined with our own little grunts and moans. It's exactly the same position as we were in last night, but neither of us are complaining because, simply put, it _works_. Our speed and friction feels so in-tune, every thrust pushes me forward while he pulls back, adding more friction, and we both return to the same origin where the pleasure spikes to an unrivalled peak once again. It'll only stop when one of us does.

And I definitely don't want to stop.

We may have only been awake for a few minutes but firing synapses, rushing pulses and a man with a reputation for being energetic can bundle up into a tireless hive of activity within moments.

His tongue makes a bold line from my sternum up to my clavicle, at which point his neck becomes strained, so I push my back out to bend down and meet him in a searing kiss; his heated breaths erupt from his nose and break against my cheek much like mine do upon his.

I keep trying to move atop him, feeling his rapturous hardness breach me over and over again, but his arms circle right behind my back and restrict me. We both come to a stop and my body comes to rest fully in his lap again to consume every inch that he can offer, the only sounds of body contact now coming from our lips. Even as I envelop him completely and savour how he pulses against my inner walls, he makes little fidgets with his hips that subtly try to push him even further within me. While enjoyable and erotic, it's rather impractical.

I shift my weight back, breaking our kiss, and transfer my hands from the pillow to his shoulders. His skin is already slick from his efforts; the smell of grass and a faint remnant of miso also remain from last night. I daren't move any further back, otherwise my opening would have to let him go, and I don't think either of us would appreciate that right now. His arms constrict around me tighter, pulling me further into him, and the reason why accumulates as he bites softly at a spot on my neck just above my collarbone. First I feel a nip at one of my more secretive sensitive spots, which easily wrenches a gasp from me as well as clenched eyelids, and then an open mouth surrounds the spot. I grab harshly at his hair with one hand, pulling at his roots with as equal a force as I believe he is sucking. He stays latched to me like a bat for a good ten seconds more, and I'm pretty confident by the time he lets me go that I'll be wearing a lovely ovular bruise of vivid purple.

One would expect me to be worried by this point, given that I'm trying to keep this on the down low, but I know how Naruto operates. He'll flirt with the dangers, but he will never cross boundaries. That hickey he's just left, despite its open placement, will be easily hidden by the high neck of my top. I won't bother saying anything in gratitude since I figure that sex first thing in the morning would be enough.

Out of nowhere I'm brought back to reality by my partner as he rapidly rolls us over, placing me in the remnant warmth that his body had left in the mattress. He leans over me closely, his torso eclipsing the majority of the ambient light from my eyes like a celestial body. Still I feel him inside me, pulsing, throbbing…urging for release.

There's a small pause, barely a few seconds long, but I get a glimpse of his eyes. Behind his hooded lids I see a glazed stare of bewitchment and awe, a look that says nothing less than '_I want you…in every which way'_. It may seem like a very specific thing to notice, but it's because I've seen this gaze on him before.

Except that until a few months ago, that look wasn't meant for me.

I daren't think about that now, not while I have him here with me, not while he repeatedly crashes his hips against the backs of my thighs with such confident strokes, not while I feel the tensing of his lower cheeks under my fingertips for every time he penetrates me, not while his elbows digging into the pillow either side of my head act like a protective cocoon that make me forget about everything but this one moment.

Our lips collide again, our chests crush together, our breaths intermingle and our bodies meld. He spreads his legs further apart and higher up my curled legs, and the new angle forces my knees further back, practically level with my chest, changing the movement of our pelvises from back and forth to up and down. He drives down into me even harder, punctuating each time he fills me with a heavy grunt. Gravity helps him reach even deeper inside me and I struggle in biting back the urge to scream, the friction against my walls becomes unbearable, and it's multiplied when his pubic area scrapes against my swollen nerve bundle.

The dam has slowly been cracking ever since we started, but this position has me so open to stimuli – my core, my chest, my neck - that I'm constantly assaulted by frayed nerves, and I can only take so much before my mind gets washed away in the flood.

I grit my teeth when he thrusts into me once again. The tension I feel in his back lets me know he's almost at the finish as well, so I try against my pending exhaustion to tense my muscles and squeeze him more as he repeatedly takes me.

"Ino…"

He doesn't even move his lips, but I hear my name cleverly hidden in his breath. I let it slide; I'm too focussed on the coming orgasmic tide to speak.

Another thrust…

_Oh, yes, __**yes**__…_

And another…

_Finish me…please…_

The next one completes it. He scrapes harshly against my core and bites into my neck again.

"N-Naruto! Oh, God!"

Yet again, it's his name that leaves my lips as my body quivers with release. Soon enough, he stops moving as well, his tiny pelvic twitches and vocal breathing next to my ear telling me of his ejaculation. His sperm feels so warm even against his red-hot member, the sensation of him bursting inside me such an exclusive and unbelievable feeling, so exclusive that I fear I may one day forget it, and so I always wish to feel it one more time.

I said I had a reason for having him keep quiet throughout this, and I honestly couldn't have expected a better outcome. There was the way he looked at me: an enchanted stare of pure emotional and physical want and need, a look he had only directed at one woman before. There was his acceptance of me and my wishes, how he remained silent for me despite being given no reason. But most of all, out of all my little musings about how much of me he truly desires, the fact we have just engaged in such a unique and treasured form of bonding without having to speak a single syllable to one another says more than any words ever could. I can't speak from experience, but sex for the sake of sex is riddled with dirty talk and insincerity.

But in making love, words are trivial…

Many would obviously be worried if they were to know our sexual relation is completely natural and without precaution, an unwanted pregnancy is a very big risk that comes with it. All I need to say is that passive chakra-siphoning seals with proximity barrier triggers are a godsend, and that having an Uzumaki as a…close friend, I'll say for the moment, is very advantageous.

I won't jump to any conclusions, considering the raw physicality of last night's moment, but this feels like a step in the right direction. It feels…right. I am warm in this man's arms, I am cosy when my lips touch his, and I am content when I sleep beside him.

I am happy when we become one…

I find warmth in being with Uzumaki Naruto.

* * *

><p><strong>10:30 hrs - Konoha Hospital<strong>

ECG totally stable, body scans showed no irregularities, urine uncontaminated despite the colour…

Narrowed eyelids shadow dull green as the black circles within scan back and forth over the chart.

'_This wuss is perfectly healthy!'_

The moron had stumbled into the walk-in treatment ward the night before complaining of light-headedness and collapsed. His personal, inexperienced and untrained self-diagnosis?

Brain cancer.

Her hands clench around the clipboard.

What kind of moron would claim to have something so severe with totally unrelated symptoms?

The blood work that came back had the simple solution. The patient was a type-1 diabetic and had missed his two previous intervals of insulin. With all the glucose swimming around his plasma and no insulin to convert it, it was no surprise that the man fainted like a malnourished child.

Patients like this grated at her tolerance. Treatment could only be administered efficiently if they were completely honest and co-operative. Due to the man's selfishness, the on-call team had spent the good part of three hours trying to look for a tumour that never existed. Given the span of the patient's incompetence in self-treatment, he probably omitted his little problem out of embarrassment.

She hates liars and deceivers. It hasn't always been the greatest thing on her list of detested traits, but recent events sought to change that.

"So…what's the verdict?"

A watery voice breaks her away from the vision piling behind her eyes: a flash of yellow, a mouth locked wide in a silent moan.

She regards the weed lying in the bed, his arms relaxed and body snug under the covers smoothly blanketing him from toe to chest. His tone shakes in what she could only analyse to be a practiced act of worry.

"You're going to be fine." She says flatly and uncaringly. "You didn't have enough insulin in your system so your body wasn't getting any energy."

"But the headaches- "

"Were attributable to lack of water. How much did you drink yesterday?"

He paused.

"Enough…"

"The dark yellow urine sample we took from you says otherwise. You should be drinking almost 3 litres every day. Consider that doctor's orders along with what I'm about to say."

His unconvinced gaze bounces off her determined stare.

"Take your insulin shots, otherwise you'll be staying here much longer in future. To forget taking them in the first place was…silly and dangerous enough. You need to stay on top of these things if you want to keep yourself healthy." She had to catch herself before 'silly' became 'stupid'.

His head sinks bashfully, but still she watches him like a dog show judge.

"I understand, and I'm sorry for all the trouble."

'_You understand, but you're not sorry, you'll be back here in a month.'_

"Okay, just be more vigilant in future. You wouldn't want to become a regular visitor here, would you?" She flashes a generous smile with her 'joke'. Fake, but generous. Damned bedside manner.

He laughs behind a replied 'no', making the underlying phrase a sarcastic 'obviously'. His skewed brow broadcasts the lie like a neon pub sign.

"Right then, we'll give you a final shot to level your system in about two hours and you'll be free to go."

With a final smile she places the clipboard back at the foot of the bed and turns for the door, mentally picturing the turn of his features to annoyance. She knows this type of person, and it wasn't hard to glean the signs.

Multiple dark blotches on the underside of his forearms, the leftovers of baggy and bloodshot eyes from before he'd fallen asleep, that constant bothersome dither in his right hand. He has to be a drug user, but to outright call him out on it is not her place. Even though his urine showed no substances during this current visit, the likelihood wouldn't be so quick to leave her mind. If she were to see him in the ward again, he would likely be in a worse state, and then she would take the matter to Shizune.

The man is playing the system, taking advantage of their Hippocratic Oath. Even if her anger at such wilful negligence of personal health gets the better of her, it is her duty as a medic to treat a patient. In due course the man is either going to kill himself through crossing the boundaries of sanity or end up permanently hospitalised.

Honestly, the latter appears to be his goal. Who can blame him? A warm bed with staff to dole on your every whim and hot meals every day.

To staff, a situation like this is derogatorily labelled the 'Pauper's Palace', where one can live as if the world revolves around them, while the taxpayers foot the bill.

She shakes the feeling away. This is a hospital, for goodness sake! These buildings are meant to rescue, preserve and repair life and she should take pride in that.

She steps out into one of the hospital's many bright corridors, the morning sun billowing through the windows exaggerating the cream surfaces around her in a natural spotlight. Under her beacon of a white coat her claret top and navy skirt strike a great contrast to the surroundings, further illuminating her presence. The shimmering fuchsia of her hair and glowing but not oily skin tells of a careful morning preparation ritual.

Only they don't know just how contrary said ritual of cleanliness is against the sweaty, sticky, noisy self-violation of the previous night. Looking at Sakura now nobody would ever think it, she seems the very epitome of conservativeness and purity.

"Hey, Sakura!"

She hears the voice before she sees the face.

Her fist reflexively clenches, knuckles pop like microwaved corn.

_You really are a dirty girl…_

Why now? Dear God, why now?

She looks up to his approaching person, stride and posture tall with confidence but balanced with an easy and placid smile. The fluttering of his pant legs combine with the bright hallway, urging the flames beside his calves to life as if he were trailing a blaze.

_But he'd burned her already._

He's still wearing that accursed vest.

_Crumpled next to_ _the purple top on the grass of the training field._

His face waters down upon seeing her reaction: flat mouth, still eyes, rule-straight brow.

Emotion? What's that? Is it edible?

It's not lack of emotion, it's being locked in. Seeing him flicks a switch.

_You love_ this_ don't you?_

_His hips slap into her buttocks._

_Ye-es!_

Her own little onset of repressed memories activated by a trigger. Him.

'_Not now…go away…'_

"Hey, you alright?"

'_Not anymore…'_

"Saaaakuraaa…"

"Argh!"

She doesn't even remember swinging, the back of her hand crashing into the arm he waved across her face. He quickly recoils, playfully reacting with the light sting. In his mind, they're just playing.

In her mind, though...

"What was that for?" Tone fierce and sharp, she stares down at him despite having to look up. A talent only women could appear to master. Naruto's smile falters.

"You were spacing out again. I know, I know. Super brave, ultra-handsome shinobi right here. It's only natural to go a bit ga-ga." Even when said in full jest, Sakura isn't laughing.

"'Super-overinflated-ego', more like. You have less panache than my toenails."

She's being serious.

He doesn't think so.

"So…you mean 'a lot'? All of you is panache…ful, or whatever the word is. I can accept being a bit below that. You've always been the smarter one."

"You're only just realising that?" Her foot taps into the floor.

"Nuh-uh. It's been obvious since the academy. I've always noticed more things than you realise, though." His Cheshire smirk rises, and she watches his eyes as they sink down her body and back up.

_You fucking dare?_

It was only a flash of a glance, but he still did it.

"Yeah…" she begins, "…likewise. I know more than you think."

His lips close together in a more civil smile, something more reserved and heartfelt.

"And that's why you're my go-to encyclopaedia!" He reaches out, palm on course to land on her shoulder.

_Don't, I know where that's been…_

One pace back and she's out of reach. His hand freezes, drawing his eyes toward it and then her in a mix of curiosity and disbelief. He probes her gaze, but he's not hitting pay dirt. A question forms on his lips…

"Is that why you're here? You need to ask me something?"

…and turns to ash on his tongue. He withdraws the offending appendage, snugly tucking it back in his pocket.

"Er…" His sudden desire to push collides with the coming answer to her question inside his throat, bringing his vocal chords to a backfire. With a shaky laugh and what she can now easily tell as one of his false smiles, he starts anew.

"Sort of yes and no, actually. I, um…"

It's practically a reversal of the day before. She was going to ask him to eat with her and his azures just bore into her as he waited, drilling at her confidence to speak. Now it's the other way around.

Now he knows how it feels.

"About yesterday…"

Her shoulders tense, but Naruto's nervousness has him looking at an interesting speck on the floor, nowhere near noticing. Even if he did, he would have believed her tension to have sprung from being denied her meal invitation, an unwanted remembrance.

"I'm really sorry, Sakura-chan. Thursday night training became a regular thing about a month ago, I guess it's just settled into my routine. The moment I started warming up I was regretting it…I was tempted to go to your place and see if you were still up for it."

_Tempted? Like _she _tempted you?_

Every syllable from his lips looks blackened by deceit from where she stands, their inky veils ghosting across to her and infesting her white coat like tar, the very hollowness of his words piercing her. She knows he has omitted truths in the past, if only to ease the pain of his youth, but for him to speak so falsely right to her face is more than an insult.

She can't even be sure if he is in the dark about her knowledge. Perhaps he isn't, and he seeks to lie anyway.

Respect is like the lottery: Very hard to gain, but oh so easy to throw away.

"…obviously I wasn't being the old friend I should, it's no wonder you're mad at me right now."

_You blew me off so that you could fuck my best friend in a training field, why wouldn't I be mad?_

"Why would I be mad?" Her iced voice gives her away. Sakura is always renowned as one to wear her heart on her sleeve. While her anger is very much in the open, Naruto is oft too dense to realise the big picture: _why_ she is angry.

At least…the _real_ reason as to why.

"Well…" Naruto stammers, realising she wants a fully-fledged answer. "It-it's like you said yesterday. We haven't spoken in a while, and I agree that we shouldn't drift apart. Skipping one little training session wouldn't have hurt."

_And yet you did it anyway…_

"And I'm sorry for turning you down like that, it wasn't fair. That's why I wanted to ask if we could reschedule. Anywhere you want, completely ramen-free, I'll buy."

So that's it? He believes that with one little meal he can make up for the most mind-scrambling, body-exploring 12 hours of her life? Of course he can! He _must_ believe that she doesn't know, otherwise the scene would have already taken a severe turn for the worse.

Yet despite the simplicity of his offering it was just-

"Too late."

Naruto's face becomes stone, frozen by her straightforwardness despite knowing it to be a typical trait of hers.

She sighs deeply, he waits for her to continue.

"The next fortnight's worth of shifts have been arranged and I've got to juggle them with any missions that might come my way." It's only the shifts for the next week that have been posted. He, however, has no need to know that. "Yesterday was the last free day I'll have for a while now. Sorry, but that was the only chance."

His expression lightens up with a harsh shrug and a tilting of the head. A physical tell of denial.

"Oh, come on, Sakura-chan, I'm sure we can squeeze something in at some-"

His stubbornness. She forgot. Damn it.

"No!" She suddenly explodes, tendrils of hair flailing like a blast radius. "What you need to realise, Naruto, is that we are growing up and have certain responsibilities both to ourselves and those around us." Naruto steps back at her outburst, but to his credit keeps a calm face.

"You skipped out by your own choice, so you've got some nerve to think that I'll just curtail my free time to be part of yours at any moment you see fit!" A stern finger is pointed at his chest, punctuating the echo of her voice resonating down the near-desolate corridor. One nurse further ahead of the arguing pair makes a brief glance over her shoulder, double taking upon noticing the unique blond hair of the village jinchuuriki and the personal nature of the conversation involved.

He stands flabbergasted, eyes saccading to anything that aren't hers and lips parting, closing, parting, closing like a fish.

"I…I'm sorry. I just feel bad for letting you down." His tongue-tied, bashful response births a tiny ember of resolve in her chest, having her believe her hidden rage is justified. It ends up sparking her off one last time.

"Well, you can sit on it for a while." She lays the kicker, internally savouring the dejection in his sigh. She has the upper hand this time, and feels it the right moment to leave him to think on her words. Her body swivels on her heel, the flat soles of her shoes not making nearly enough noise to cover the remark that breaches the barrier between her 'keep it civil' mind and 'stick it to him' heart.

'_Maybe now you understand-'_

"-how people feel when you're not honest with them."

With her back already to him, she doesn't see the snapped lift of his head. Annoyed at her self-betrayal, she hides her ensuing shake of the head under the guise of freeing the hair from her face, adding credibility to the motion with a wave of her hand across her brow.

She continues to walk despite the skin-crawling chill hacking up her spine. Only when she turns a corner in the direction of the next patient on her mental list does she feel safe.

Naruto remains pasted to the spot, an inquisitive but highly intense low-browed gaze following his teammate until she loses him. With a stiff movement his foot is lifted from the floor to turn him back in the direction he had come, all the while continually eyeballing the corner that Sakura had turned.

Under the questions squirming through his brain, he doesn't even remember walking out of the hospital. Only then does he look at the hand he had previously extended toward her, recalling her reaction as if he were a leper.

'_This...could turn sour.'_

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I would like to take this opportunity to give large thanks to MillerIce, who did the early beta reading for this chapter (which consisted of the first two scenes) but has since had other personal commitments that I have not wanted to interfere with.**

**Instead of addressing multiple topics in one wall of text that has to be scoured, I'll make my explanations in the form of a numbered list.**

**1. Yes, I am fully aware that this isn't chapter 4 of Face the Music as was requested first by the voters. This is because, in plain English, this chapter of SMHW was far closer to completion and I REALLY wanted to get something out for the holiday season. What a day I've planned to release it on, eh? So before you start complaining about FtM, it only needs a few more scenes added to it, so it's coming next.**

**2. Yes, it has been literally over half a year since my previous upload. My reply? 'Tough'. I've got far too much fucking shit going on that what little leisure time I have left is spent, in essence, relaxing. DO NOT take these words as an indication that I see the writing as a chore, because otherwise I would have simply stopped doing it. Again, it's the fact that my spare time is so minimal. I need time to get myself back into my 'zone', I can't just start writing with a cold brain and expect the ensuing words to be any kind of good. In fact, that's what half of the last scene in this chapter was, fucking rushed, and now it looks shit. I'll come back and edit it when I'm not so tired...and near-drunk.**

**3. Am I sorry for these upload delays? Absolutely! I will not, however, insult you all by saying something hollow like 'I'll try my damndest to make uploads more frequent'. All I can say now is that uploads will be done when they're done. In basic terms: if it has a lemon in it, it'll probably be written quicker XD.**

**4. And speaking of the lemons in the chapter; was the use of two lemons in different perspectives weird? Hell yes, but it was what I wanted to do with it. Isn't it a bit unlikely that a couple would have intercourse almost immediately after waking up? Very, but I couldn't care less, call it artistic license or whatever. Isn't Ino's method of contraception a bit of a cop out? Undeniably so, but at least it makes sense in terms of the Naruto world.**

**5. Should you be taking this particular story seriously? FUCK NO! Just remember, as I explained before, SMHW is pretty much the NaruIno fic I wanted to see, never found on FF, and thus took up the mantle to write myself. Based on previous reviews, it's been going alright. Again, SMHW is more or less my own present to myself. Hell, Just Reward and its to-come sequel are exactly the same.**

**6. Should you read and review? Well, the feedback would help for certain! Just remember, if you like it, follow it; if you love it, favourite it! And if you're so in awe of what you've read...or I have simply gone and pissed you off...go ahead and leave a review telling me what I've done right or wrong and that I should either write a book or go suck a dick behind a sideshow wagon.**

**7. "MoS, your fics tend to lack anonymous reviews!" That's because, from my standpoint, the majority of anonymous reviewers are cowards who would rather make a snide remark and not leave any manner in which their victim author can reply and make their case. Whenever an anonymous review is posted, I have to authorise it, and most of the time I do not regardless of whether they are complimentary or not. I have so much more respect for a registered user of FF leaving a harsh critique than I do a useless nobody who would make a crude/idiotic remark and expect no recrimination. There are the odd few reviews that make very good points, and as such I approve them. But for the most part, you will no longer see anonymous reviews for my fics.**

**8. Okay, I confess, I have actually written other things non-Naruto in the previous months. If you wouldn't mind, or if you're into either Need For Speed or Ace Combat, then check out the 2 works I have on my alternate account, 'The Ace Combatant'. It's linked in my profile, if that makes it any easier.**

**9. I wish you all a Merry Christmas/Happy 25th of December, and a high-spirited new year.**

**Until next time,**

**Man of Sitruuna**


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